Modulate raises $25M to advance deepfake detection with audio-native AI platform

Modulate, a voice intelligence company founded by MIT alumni, has closed a $25 million funding round to expand its deepfake detection and audio analysis platform. The round was led by Future Ventures, with Hyperplane and Lakestar also participating. The fresh capital brings Modulate’s total funding to $60 million, a notable jump from its previous $41 million raised at a valuation of roughly $170 million. What Modulate actually does At the core of Modulate’s business is Velma, an audio-native AI platform that doesn’t just transcribe speech. It dissects it. The system deploys more than 100 specialized models to analyze raw audio across multiple dimensions: emotion, tone, intent, whether the voice is synthetic, and the subtler conversational patterns that humans pick up instinctively but machines have historically struggled with. The company claims Velma delivers up to 2x the accuracy and 7x fewer false positives compared to traditional large language models applied to audio tasks. Those aren’t trivial improvements when you’re talking about flagging fraudulent calls in real time. A false positive in a call center means a legitimate customer gets blocked. Modulate currently processes m...