SAN FRANCISCO, June 24, 2026 — Valence AI, an emotional intelligence infrastructure company, today announced $5 million in total funding, including a seed round led by Differential Ventures, with participation from Difference Partners, Willowtree Ventures, Change Paradox Ventures, and SRI International. The announcement coincides with the issuance of two U.S. patents on the company’s proprietary audio signal processing pipeline, among the only patents ever issued on identifying emotional state from live speech in real-time conversation using deep learning.
The company builds the emotional intelligence infrastructure for voice AI. Its Pulse Emotion model analyzes live calls and classifies emotional state from speech in real time, turning tone, pacing, and other vocal cues into structured data that voice agent builders, contact center platforms, and sales and support teams can act on alongside transcripts and intent. The company was founded by Chloe Duckworth and Shannon Brownlee, who launched Valence AI after a hackathon project focused on helping neurodivergent people better understand emotional cues in conversation.
Valence AI develops and publishes its own foundation models, trained on proprietary speech datasets built to reflect a wide range of demographic and neurotype diversity, and reports 92 percent accuracy on internal benchmarks. Products include emotion-aware IVR, an Agent Assist copilot for live call coaching, emotionally intelligent AI voice agents, and post-call quality assurance. Integrations with ElevenLabs and Cartesia enable realistic, expressive audio informed by its emotional analysis of the speaker. In production deployments, the company reports handle time reductions of 30 percent, alongside gains in customer satisfaction scores, close rates, and time to close.
“Voice AI has made enormous progress toward understanding what people say. The more challenging gap remains what people mean, and emotional state understanding is the signal that closes that gap,” said Nick Adams, Managing Partner at Differential Ventures. “Valence AI is building the infrastructure layer that makes that signal usable, and they are doing it with proprietary models, issued patents, and enterprise-scale deployments that deliver measurable business impact.”
The company holds two U.S. patents on identifying emotional state from live speech in real-time conversation, both issued in June 2026. The patents cover how Valence AI converts raw audio into an emotion classification, normalizing for pitch and timbre so the signal reflects a speaker’s emotional state rather than their demographic profile. One patent covers the core signal processing pipeline; the other extends that method to include live haptic feedback. Valence AI both owns the IP and runs commercial deployments on the same technology, a combination that remains uncommon in the emotion AI market.
“Voice AI has gotten remarkably good at understanding what people say, but it still can’t hear how they feel: the frustration under a polite request, the hesitation before someone hangs up,” said Chloe Duckworth, co-founder and CEO of Valence AI. “That gap between human experience and machine intelligence is exactly what we close. Real emotional alignment begins when models understand both the intent and impact of their output. We’re building the emotional communication layer that gives voice AI that understanding.”
The new funding will support expansion of Pulse’s language coverage, currently live in English with additional languages underway, deeper integrations across voice AI orchestration platforms, and new hires in engineering, go-to-market, and customer success. Valence AI’s customers include Harte Hanks, CustomerHD, and BPO Centers. Its technology is deployed across Fortune 500 retailers, healthcare, and clinical research environments. The company has also introduced the Emotion Quotient, a customer satisfaction metric calculated from real-time emotional signals during each turn of a call rather than post-call surveys, designed as a more precise alternative to NPS for voice-heavy businesses.
About Valence AI
Valence AI builds emotional intelligence infrastructure for voice. Its patented signal processing pipeline and Pulse Emotion models listen to how people sound on calls, detect how they feel in real time, and turn that into data voice AI systems can use alongside intent and transcripts. The company holds two issued U.S. patents on its core signal processing methodology and serves customer intelligence and contact center operators across customer support, financial services, and healthcare. Its products, including emotion-aware IVR, Agent Assist, AI Agent, and post-call quality assurance, are SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA compliant. Learn more at getvalenceai.com.
About Differential Ventures
Differential Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2018, that invests in enterprise AI and data infrastructure companies at the pre-seed and seed stages. The firm partners with technical founders building dynamic AI systems and data technologies that enable the data-driven economy. Differential is comprised of industry experts from leading hedge funds and executives from high-growth tech companies who provide domain expertise, operational support, and a specialized network to help portfolio companies scale. For more information, visit https://www.differential.vc/.
Media Contact
Laura Anderson McGrath for Valence AI
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SOURCE Valence AI
