companies

Tavus

Developer platform for building real-time conversational AI video agents used in sales, support and training.

Tavus was founded in San Francisco by Hassaan Raza and Quinn Favret and went through Y Combinator's Summer 2021 batch. The founders set out to solve a narrower problem than most generative-video startups: not making a video look real, but making an AI video agent that can see, hear, and respond to a person in real time with human-like timing. The company has raised about $64 million across its history, including a Series B in late 2025, from investors such as Sequoia Capital, Scale Venture Partners, Y Combinator, and HubSpot's venture arm. Tavus reports powering over 100,000 developers building on its API. Tavus's stack is split into a rendering model for lifelike facial expression, a perception model for understanding a user's speech and expressions, and a conversation model that handles turn-taking so an AI replica doesn't talk over or lag behind the person it's speaking with. Enterprise customers use it for scaled sales outreach, candidate interviews, customer onboarding, and training simulations.

Founded

2021

Headquarters

San Francisco, United States

Sector

applications