Rime will supply the text-to-speech engine for Dialpad's entire suite of agentic voice AI products, the companies announced Thursday. The deal embeds Rime's hyper-realistic voice models into a platform that handles millions of customer interactions, replacing rigid IVR systems with conversational audio that operates around the clock.
Dialpad selected Rime after an evaluation of TTS providers, citing the naturalness and expressiveness of its models. The partnership reflects a broader shift in enterprise communications: as AI systems take on multi-step tasks autonomously, the voice layer must sound less like a machine and more like a person.
What Rime brings to Dialpad's platform
Rime's architecture combines machine learning with linguistic science to produce low-latency, emotionally expressive speech. The models capture tone, emotion, and brand identity while handling practical details that trip up lesser systems - such as reading back phone numbers and complex data without awkward pauses or errors.
For Dialpad, which has offered real-time AI solutions since 2018, the integration means its agentic voice products can now deliver what the company calls "concierge-level experiences." Routine inquiries get resolved by AI agents, while human staff focus on complex, high-value conversations.
Executive perspective on the deal
"Partnering with Dialpad allows us to bring hyper-realistic, emotionally expressive voice AI to businesses on a massive scale," said Lily Clifford, CEO and co-founder of Rime. "Dialpad shares our vision that voice interactions shouldn't feel like navigating a rigid machine."
Dialpad's leadership pointed to a practical evaluation process. "We partnered with Rime because our evaluation found that Rime's models met our requirements for naturalness and expressiveness, felt the most natural, and rapidly deliver new voice capabilities as they reach production," the company said.
Rime, founded in 2022 by speech scientists and Stanford engineers, now powers more than 100 million monthly interactions across healthcare, finance, and customer experience sectors. The company is backed by M13, Twilio Ventures, Corazon Capital, and Unusual Ventures.
The shift toward agentic voice in customer experience
The partnership signals where enterprise voice AI is heading. Traditional IVR menus and hold queues are giving way to dynamic systems that understand intent, plan resolutions, and execute tasks without human intervention. Voice quality becomes the differentiator - a robotic tone undermines the efficiency gains of automation.
For communications professionals tracking this space, the technical bar is rising. Low-latency generation, emotional range, and accuracy with structured data like phone numbers are now table stakes for any Text-to-Speech AI provider competing at the enterprise level. Meanwhile, the use case for AI for Customer Support continues expanding beyond chatbots into full voice interactions.
Why this matters for PR and communications professionals
Voice AI partnerships like this one are rewriting the script for customer experience announcements. The story is no longer about what the technology can do - it's about how natural it sounds while doing it. When drafting messaging around AI integrations, emphasize concrete performance metrics (latency, expressiveness, accuracy with structured data) over vague claims about "transforming" interactions. Journalists and analysts in this space increasingly expect vendors to name their evaluation criteria, not just the outcome. Dialpad's willingness to share that it tested multiple providers before selecting Rime gives the announcement more weight than a standard partnership press release.
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