“Voice Is the Most Human Medium” PlayAI Raises $21M to Transform AI Conversations

What started as a simple text-to-speech Chrome extension in 2016 has grown into a company poised to reshape how humans interact with machines. PlayAI, founded by Hammad Syed and Mahmoud Felfel—an ex-WhatsApp engineer—has secured $21 million in seed and pre-seed funding to further its mission of crafting natural, human-like voice interfaces. Backed by notable investors like Kindred Ventures, Y Combinator, Race Capital, and Soma Capital, the company is setting its sights on creating the next generation of voice AI solutions. “Speech as an interface is exploding in popularity, and we knew it was a massive opportunity from the get-go,” said Mahmoud Felfel, PlayAI’s co-founder and CEO. “Building voice agents that can converse like humans and autonomously handle complex tasks is n