Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Tomer Cohen and Ben Wiley launched David AI just days before the Y Combinator deadline—submitting their application at midnight and hoping it counted. A year later, their company is now one of the market leaders for voice training data in AI, having just closed a $25 million Series A.
They met while working at Scale AI, where they bonded over the belief that the next big leap for AI would be moving beyond screens, into real-world interactions powered by voice. That idea became David AI, a company that collects, produces, and refines massive volumes of audio data for training voice models. So far, they've built a library of 100,000 hours of audio in over 15 languages, complete with rich metadata like accents and dialects.
YC Partner Diana Hu recently sat down with the David AI founders to talk about how they got here, their founding story, and the kind of company they are building.
Learn more about David AI at https://www.withdavid.ai.
Apply to Y Combinator: ycombinator.com/apply
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:12 - What is David AI?
00:31 - Challenges in Audio Data
01:11 - Origin Story of David AI
01:46 - Building the First Product
04:12 - Early Success and Growth
05:24 - Business Model and Approach
07:40 - Future Plans and Hiring
Tomer Cohen and Ben Wiley launched David AI just days before the Y Combinator deadline—submitting their application at midnight and hoping it counted. A year later, their company is now one of the market leaders for voice training data in AI, having just closed a $25 million Series A.
They met while working at Scale AI, where they bonded over the belief that the next big leap for AI would be moving beyond screens, into real-world interactions powered by voice. That idea became David AI, a company that collects, produces, and refines massive volumes of audio data for training voice models. So far, they've built a library of 100,000 hours of audio in over 15 languages, complete with rich metadata like accents and dialects.
YC Partner Diana Hu recently sat down with the David AI founders to talk about how they got here, their founding story, and the kind of company they are building.
Learn more about David AI at https://www.withdavid.ai.
Apply to Y Combinator: ycombinator.com/apply
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:12 - What is David AI?
00:31 - Challenges in Audio Data
01:11 - Origin Story of David AI
01:46 - Building the First Product
04:12 - Early Success and Growth
05:24 - Business Model and Approach
07:40 - Future Plans and Hiring
