Plivo

Plivo builds communications infrastructure and AI agents for customer engagement. Its voice and messaging APIs let developers add calls and messages to web and mobile applications. Businesses can use its AI Agent Platform to handle customer support, qualify leads, and book appointments across voice, WhatsApp, SMS, and web chat. AI Agent Studio generates agent flows from plain-English prompts, with tools for testing, connecting business data, and handing conversations to human specialists.

Founded in 2011 by Venky B and Michael Ricordeau, Plivo is led by Venky B as CEO. It began as an open-source telephony framework built with Python and FreeSWITCH, then launched a cloud-hosted service in 2012. Its programmable approach now lets developers connect calls to their own AI pipelines: bidirectional audio streaming sends live call audio over WebSockets to speech recognition, language models, and speech synthesis services, then returns generated speech to the caller.

Plivo combines the agent application layer with communications APIs and an underlying carrier network, including SIP trunking and phone numbers. The company reports more than one billion API requests per month and connectivity to over 190 countries. Customers can use its managed AI stack or supply their own speech and language models while retaining Plivo’s connection to the phone network.