Play.ht

PlayHT is an AI voice technology company backed by Y Combinator that develops text-to-speech and voice-cloning tools under the play.ht brand, later also branded as PlayAI. The company focuses on generating natural, expressive synthetic speech for creators, businesses, and developers.

Its platform spans a web-based voice studio, an extensive voice library, and APIs for real-time and batch speech generation. PlayHT has expanded toward conversational voice AI and voice agents in addition to standard narration use cases.

PlayHT offers 800-plus AI voices across 140-plus languages, instant and high-fidelity voice cloning, and an AI Voice Studio for adjusting pronunciation, pacing, emphasis, pitch, and emotional tone. Users can generate narration, podcasts, and voiceovers, or embed low-latency speech via API.

The platform supports downloadable audio, commercial usage on paid plans, and developer APIs for real-time text-to-speech and voice agents. Higher tiers unlock more characters or unlimited generation, additional voice clones, and commercial rights.

PlayHT targets content creators, marketers, podcasters, e-learning producers, and developers who need scalable, natural-sounding AI voices and programmatic text-to-speech, including teams building conversational voice applications.

PlayHT is backed by Y Combinator and has raised approximately $21 million in funding, including participation from 500 Global. The company operates in the competitive AI text-to-speech and voice-agent market. Additional round-by-round details and valuation have not been broadly disclosed.