Maki and Deepgram partner to power real-time voice AI for hiring

Hiring is shifting toward automation that can operate with the same clarity and responsiveness as a skilled recruiter. To achieve that standard, voice-first interactions need more than transcription; they need real-time understanding capable of handling accents, interruptions, noisy environments, and high volumes. This is the layer that determines whether an autonomous agent feels natural or frustrating.

To deliver fast, reliable candidate conversations, Maki integrates Deepgram at the core of its voice pipeline. Their streaming speech-to-text provides the stability, speed, and accuracy our agents need to respond instantly and keep candidates engaged from the first question to the final next step.

Real-time performance that supports natural conversations

Maki’s voice agents evaluate candidates, schedule interviews, and guide them through hiring flows. These tasks depend on transcripts that arrive in milliseconds and preserve enough detail for an LLM to understand intent. Deepgram enables that. Its streaming models are optimized for live interactions and maintain high accuracy even in imperfect audio conditions. This keeps dialogues smooth and prevents the repetitive clarifications that typically break automated experiences.

A fit for global hiring and enterprise expectations

As Maki scales with customers across Europe and beyond, we need infrastructure that adapts to regional compliance, latency profiles, and multilingual use cases. Deepgram’s regional endpoints provide the flexibility required for fast and compliant operations in Europe, while their strong English and French performance aligns with the majority of our cross-border hiring flows.

Enterprise teams also expect clear security boundaries. Deepgram supports in-flight processing without storage and strict access controls that meet customer review standards; this allows Maki to integrate voice capabilities without introducing operational risk.

"Our customers rely on Voice AI to deliver consistent interview experiences across regions, volumes, and peak demand. Powered by Deepgram, this real-time speech infrastructure helps us scale globally while meeting enterprise expectations on accuracy, latency, and compliance."
Maxime Legardez Coquin, CEO, Maki

“Enterprise voice applications only succeed when they perform consistently under real-world conditions. Maki’s use of Deepgram shows how real-time speech infrastructure enables reliable, high-volume automation without sacrificing responsiveness or trust.”
Scott Stephenson, CEO, Deepgram

Built for volume and unpredictability

Hiring does not happen at a steady pace; spikes are normal. Deepgram’s streaming architecture handles bursty concurrency, giving Maki the confidence to support thousands of simultaneous interviews without compromising transcript quality or response speed. This reliability under load is especially important for customers with seasonal peaks or large recruitment funnels.

Strengthening downstream automation

Clean, structured transcripts are not just for conversation quality. They power everything that happens after the call: automatic updates to ATS and HRIS systems, quality assurance, analytics, and model improvements. With Deepgram providing accurate timestamps and structured text, Maki can maintain a tight loop between real-time interaction and automated follow-up.

The outcome: faster, clearer, more human candidate interactions

By pairing Maki’s autonomous HR agents with Deepgram’s real-time speech foundation, hiring teams benefit from:

• fast, natural candidate conversations that feel consistent and on-brand
• higher completion rates thanks to fewer misunderstandings or repeated prompts
• shorter time-to-hire as more steps move forward without manual intervention
• operational reliability at scale, even in complex, multilingual environments

This partnership allows Maki to advance toward a future where every candidate interaction is understood instantly and handled intelligently.