Week 8, 16–22 Feb 2026 · hotwired.news

Hearspeech-to-text1

Gnani.aiModel providermodel release2026-02-19net-new

Gnani.ai ships Vachana STT and TTS under Inya VoiceOS

Sovereign Indic STT/TTS with a claimed ~10M calls/day and sub-5% Hindi WER — all Gnani-stated, but telephony-first and on-prem options matter for Indian BFSI/gov.

Also Speak

Details1 source

Gnani.ai launched Vachana STT and Vachana TTS under its Inya VoiceOS stack at the India AI Impact Summit: India-hosted speech models for Indic languages with claimed sub-5% Hindi/Indian-English WER and zero-shot voice cloning under 10 seconds.

Vachana STT + TTS

Announcement

Speaktext-to-speech1

Daily / PipecatPlatformlaunch2026-02-20

Pipecat 0.0.103 adds Deepgram SageMaker TTS and Rime Arcana defaults

Self-hosted Deepgram TTS on SageMaker matches the existing SageMaker STT path.

Details3 sources

pipecat-ai 0.0.103 adds DeepgramSageMakerTTSService for Deepgram TTS on SageMaker HTTP/2, defaults RimeTTSService to model arcana, and adds Arcana/Mistv2 InputParams.

pipecat-ai 0.0.103

Announcement github.com github.com

Showavatars, video1

LiveKitPlatformlaunch2026-02-17

LiveKit Agents 1.4.2 adds TruGen avatar plugin

Avatar additions for 1.4.2.

Details1 source

livekit-agents 1.4.2 adds a TruGen avatar plugin and documents LemonSlice under video avatars.

livekit-agents 1.4.2

Announcement

ThinkLLMs, speech-to-speech3

KrispPlatformAPI2026-02-18net-new

Krisp launches Real-Time Voice Translation SDK for CX platforms

CX vendors get in-call speech-to-speech translation as an SDK on 18 February — production-proven in Krisp's own contact-centre product, not a greenfield demo.

Also HearSpeakConnect

Details2 sources

Krisp released a Real-Time Voice Translation SDK so customer-experience platforms can embed speech-to-speech translation in live calls across 60+ languages, with local noise cancellation and custom vocabulary.

Voice Translation SDK

Announcement businesswire.com

FlashLabsPlatformlaunch2026-02-18

FlashLabs launches FlashAI 2.0 integrated voice-agent platform

Another vertically integrated voice-agent stack (Chroma) shipping 18 February against cascaded APIs — early-access only, so treat production footprint as unproven from the wire alone.

Also OrchestrateConnect

Details1 source

FlashLabs announced FlashAI 2.0, a vertically integrated enterprise voice AI platform on its Chroma speech stack for contact-centre and sales agents, with human-in-the-loop escalation and an early-access programme for the first 100 companies.

FlashAI 2.0

Announcement

Gnani.aiModel providermodel release2026-02-17net-new

Gnani.ai unveils Inya VoiceOS 5B speech-to-speech research preview

Sovereign Indic S2S research preview at 5B parameters with a stated 14B follow-on — press-sourced vendor figures, not a dated public API GA.

Also SpeakHear

Details2 sources

Gnani.ai unveiled Inya VoiceOS at the India AI Impact Summit: a 5-billion-parameter speech-to-speech foundational model under the IndiaAI Mission, released as a research preview ahead of a planned 14B system.

Inya VoiceOS

Announcement fortuneindia.com

Orchestrateframeworks, evals1

Daily / PipecatPlatformAPI2026-02-20

Pipecat 0.0.103 makes user idle timeout updatable at runtime

Bots can raise or clear idle prompts mid-call without rebuilding the aggregator.

Details3 sources

pipecat-ai 0.0.103 adds UserIdleTimeoutUpdateFrame and always constructs UserIdleController (timeout 0 disables).

pipecat-ai 0.0.103

Announcement github.com github.com

Connecttelephony, channels1

Daily / PipecatPlatformAPI2026-02-20

Pipecat 0.0.103 adds Daily SIP transfer and REFER frames

Warm/cold SIP transfers become frame-driven instead of out-of-band Daily API calls.

Details3 sources

pipecat-ai 0.0.103 adds DailySIPTransferFrame and DailySIPReferFrame so pipelines can queue SIP transfer and REFER on Daily transport.

pipecat-ai 0.0.103

Announcement github.com github.com