AethexAI, founded by ex-Goldman and ex-Meta executives, raises $3 million to build voice AI for Africa and the Middle East

AethexAI raised $3 million in pre-seed funding led by 4DX Ventures, with participation from Enza Capital, Dorm Room Fund, Mojo Ventures, and Stanford GSB 26 Fund. The startup was founded by Mariama Diallo (former Goldman Sachs and ModelML employee) and Ayooluwa Odemuyiwa (former Meta employee and Caltech graduate).

Rather than using existing tools like Vapi and LiveKit, AethexAI built its own small models and orchestration layer to handle localized dialects of English, French, and Arabic. The company developed its Kora series with parameters ranging from 300 million to 1.7 billion — small enough to reduce latency in the region while maintaining accuracy.

The startup is now handling more than 17,000 calls per day and is launching its platform for enterprises, along with APIs and SDKs for developers. Current use cases include debt collection, customer activation, and KYC (Know Your Customer identity-checking) verification.