San Francisco, CA – Cekura AI and Daily.co are co-hosting a significant hackathon focused on real-time voice and artificial intelligence, offering participants a direct interview opportunity with Y Combinator. The event, scheduled for May 30th at the Y Combinator office in San Francisco, has been highlighted by Nicolas Dessaigne, who praised both companies for their impressive teams and expertise in the field. Dessaigne stated in a tweet, "If you’re building in real-time voice / AI, don’t miss this hackathon. @cekuraAi and @trydaily have both impressive teams that know what they are doing."
Cekura AI, an AI voice agent testing startup, specializes in automated quality assurance and observability for conversational AI, particularly for compliance-heavy industries. The company, founded by IIT Bombay graduates, secured $2.4 million in seed funding led by Y Combinator in 2025. Cekura AI's platform provides scalable red teaming, multilingual testing, and production monitoring to ensure the reliability and security of AI agents.
Daily.co is a leading provider of APIs for real-time video and audio, enabling developers to integrate voice and video functionalities into their applications. The company's robust infrastructure supports a wide array of use cases, from virtual events to telehealth, making it a crucial player in the real-time communication space. Their involvement underscores the event's focus on practical application and innovation in voice AI.
The hackathon aims to foster innovation in high-reasoning voice AI, utilizing tools like Pipecat, NVIDIA SOTA models, AWS compute, and Cekura for automated evaluation loops. Beyond the Y Combinator interview, participants will compete for special Judges’ Prizes from NVIDIA and AWS. This event is expected to attract top talent and accelerate advancements in voice AI technology.
The collaboration between Cekura AI, Daily.co, and Y Combinator signifies a growing industry push towards more reliable and sophisticated conversational AI. With the market for AI agents expanding rapidly, events like this hackathon are crucial for discovering new talent and pushing the boundaries of what is possible in real-time voice AI. Industry analysts anticipate continued investment and innovation in voice-based interfaces throughout 2026.
