Week 25, 15–21 Jun 2026 · hotwired.news

Hearspeech-to-text3

SonioxModel providermodel release2026-06-16

Soniox ships v5 Real-Time STT with live speaker separation

Pairs the structured-speech v5 stack with a live path five days after Async — endpoint_sensitivity and speaker-aware streaming matter for agent turn-taking, not just WER.

Also Orchestrate

Details2 sources

Soniox released stt-rt-v5 for live audio, adding reinvented real-time speaker separation, spoken language ID across 60+ languages, streaming translation over 3,600 pairs, faster semantic endpointing with endpoint_sensitivity, and stronger alphanumeric formatting.

Soniox v5 Real-Time (stt-rt-v5)

Announcement soniox.com

Daily / PipecatPlatformlaunch2026-06-16

Pipecat 1.4.0 adds MoonshineSTTService

On-device Moonshine joins Whisper-family segmented STT options.

Details3 sources

pipecat-ai 1.4.0 adds MoonshineSTTService for Useful Sensors' Moonshine on-device ASR.

pipecat-ai 1.4.0

Announcement github.com github.com

Shunya LabsPlatformlaunch2026-06-15

Shunya Labs launches multilingual Voice AI for 216+ languages

CPU-first Indic-depth stack dated 15 Jun targets the 90%+ India native-language preference claim on the wire — a regional alternative to English-first STT/TTS for regulated on-prem buyers.

Also SpeakUse

Details2 sources

Shunya Labs announced a multilingual Voice AI platform covering 216+ languages and dialects with deep Indic and South/Southeast Asian focus, CPU-first deployment for on-premise or cloud, aimed at BFSI, healthcare, government, and customer support.

Multilingual Voice AI platform

Announcement indiatechnologynews.in

Speaktext-to-speech2

LiveKitPlatformlaunch2026-06-19

LiveKit Agents 1.6.2 adds Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS and Fish Audio prosody

Gemini and Fish Audio TTS updates.

Details1 source

livekit-agents 1.6.2 adds Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS streaming and Fish Audio speed/volume prosody params defaulting to s2.1-pro.

livekit-agents 1.6.2

Announcement

Daily / PipecatPlatformAPI2026-06-16

Pipecat 1.4.0 adds AggregatedTextProgressFrame and will_be_spoken

Clients can render partial spoken text without guessing from raw TTSTextFrame bursts.

Details3 sources

pipecat-ai 1.4.0 adds AggregatedTextProgressFrame beside TTSTextFrame and will_be_spoken on AggregatedTextFrame, plus Azure private TTS endpoints.

pipecat-ai 1.4.0

Announcement github.com github.com

ThinkLLMs, speech-to-speech2

Daily / PipecatPlatformAPI2026-06-16

Pipecat 1.4.0 adds realtime_service_mode turn contract

Stops cascade aggregators from fighting server-VAD realtime sessions.

Details3 sources

pipecat-ai 1.4.0 adds realtime_service_mode on LLMContextAggregatorPair with RealtimeServiceMetadataFrame for OpenAI Realtime, Grok, and Inworld locally-driven-turns examples.

pipecat-ai 1.4.0

Announcement github.com github.com

InworldPlatformAPI2026-06-15

Inworld ships Mastra Realtime voice package for duplex agents

Gives Mastra builders a first-class duplex path on Inworld without hand-rolling cascade glue — tool calls stay mid-conversation on the same audio channel.

Also OrchestrateSpeak

Details2 sources

Inworld released @mastra/voice-inworld-realtime, binding its Realtime API WebSocket session to Mastra Agents so STT, LLM, expressive TTS, semantic VAD, barge-in, and tool calling run in one duplex stream.

@mastra/voice-inworld-realtime · vendor Mastra

Announcement mastra.ai

Orchestrateframeworks, evals3

Retell AIPlatformlaunch2026-06-19net-new

Retell ships Colloquial Model, Expressive Mode, and live call ops

Bundles delivery polish (colloquial + expressive) with supervisor ops and native CRM on one platform week — reduces the custom glue most voice-agent teams still wire by hand.

Also SpeakConnect

Details1 source

Retell's 2026 launch-week changelog dated 19 Jun adds Colloquial Model (~50 ms phrasing rewrite), Expressive Mode with auto and manual emotion tags, Live Call Monitoring with whisper and takeover, Built-in CRM two-way sync to Salesforce and HubSpot, plus Custom Dashboards.

Colloquial Model, Expressive Mode, Live Call Monitoring, Built-in CRM

Announcement

LiveKitPlatformmodel release2026-06-17

LiveKit ships Turn Detector v1 with open eot-bench

Moves end-of-turn out of STT vendor lock-in: one Cloud-default detector across any STT/LLM/TTS stack, with a public bench so operators can compare cutoffs vs latency.

Also Hear

Details1 source

LiveKit released Turn Detector v1, an audio+semantic end-of-turn model that is now the default on LiveKit Cloud at no charge for hosted agents, plus open-weight v1-mini for CPU and the open eot-bench suite covering English and 13 other languages.

LiveKit Turn Detector v1.0 and eot-bench

Announcement

Daily / PipecatPlatformlaunch2026-06-16

Pipecat 1.4.0 adds pipecat.evals behavioural eval harness

First-party behaviour evals become part of the release train instead of external harnesses only.

Details3 sources

pipecat-ai 1.4.0 ships pipecat.evals for scripted bot behaviour checks in text or audio mode, usable as a library and from the CLI.

pipecat-ai 1.4.0

Announcement github.com github.com

Connecttelephony, channels1

Daily / PipecatPlatformAPI2026-06-16

Pipecat 1.4.0 adds websocket transport to the dev runner and bot-interrupted RTVI

Clients learn about barges without inferring from missing audio alone.

Details3 sources

pipecat-ai 1.4.0 adds websocket to the development runner -t choices and a bot-interrupted RTVI server message when output is cut off.

pipecat-ai 1.4.0

Announcement github.com github.com

Useagents in market2

KonectaEnablerlaunch2026-06-16net-new

Konecta launches Kolibri agentic CX orchestration platform

A BPO-scale enabler productising voice and digital agents with named CX partners (ElevenLabs, Uniphore, NiCE) and a live Telepizza voicebot reference — production ops, not another pilot deck.

Also OrchestrateConnect

Details1 source

Konecta launched Kolibri, an agentic AI orchestration platform with up to 80% pre-built CX use cases, ISO 42001 governance, FinOps dashboards, and open integrations including ElevenLabs, Uniphore, NiCE, Google Cloud, CrewAI, and Salesforce.

Kolibri

Announcement

LuaPlatformlaunch2026-06-15

Lua launches US Home Services voice agents for trades

Verticalises Lua Voice for US trades with calendar booking and field-service CRM hooks — the 1-in-4 / 85% missed-call figures are vendor-stated industry framing.

Also Connect

Details1 source

Lua launched Lua for Home Services in the US: voice agents for HVAC, plumbing, roofing and related trades that answer calls, qualify leads, quote from a price book, and book jobs into calendars or field-service tools.

Lua for Home Services

Announcement