- Updated: March 26, 2026
- 4 min read
Mistral AI Launches Voxtral: Open‑Source Multilingual TTS Model
Image Credits:Photo by Thomas Fuller/NurPhoto via Getty Images / Getty Images AI Mistral releases a new open source model for speech generation Ivan Mehta 4:30 AM PDT · March 26, 2026 French AI company Mistral released a new open source text-to-speech model on Thursday that can be used by voice AI assistants or in enterprise use cases like customer support.The model, which lets enterprises build voice agents for sales and customer engagement, puts Mistral in direct competition with the likes of ElevenLabs, Deepgram, and OpenAI. The new model, called Voxtral TTS, supports nine languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Hindi, and Arabic. “Our customers have been asking for a speech model. So we built a small-sized speech model that can fit on a smartwatch, a smartphone, a laptop, or other edge devices.The cost of it is a fraction of anything else on the market, but it offers state-of-the-art performance,” Pierre Stock, VP of science operations at Mistral AI, told TechCrunch during a phone interview. Image Credits:Mistral Mistral said the new model can adapt a custom voice with a sample of less than five seconds and can capture characteristics like subtle accents, inflections, intonations, and irregularities in the flow of speech.The model, based on Ministral 3B, can switch between languages easily without losing the characteristics of the voice, which is useful for use cases like dubbing or real-time translation. Stock said the company wanted the model to sound human and not robotic. The model has been built for real-time performance, according to the company. It has a time-to-first-audio (TTFA) — a measure of when the model starts “speaking” after receiving input — of 90 ms for a 10-second sample of 500 characters.The model also has a real-time factor (RTF) of 6x, which means it can render a 10-second clip in roughly 1.6 seconds. Image Credits:Mistral AI Earlier this year, Mistral launched a pair of transcription models, one for large batch processing and the other for real-time use cases with low latency. With the new speech model, the company is likely aiming to provide a full suite of voice products to enterprises.“We plan to have an end-to-end platform that can handle multimodal streams of input, including audio, text, and image and output as well. The main benefit of that is you get way more information with an end-to-end agentic system that supports audio as an input or output,” Stock said. Techcrunch event Disrupt 2026: The tech ecosystem, all in one room Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity.Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $400. Save up to $300 or 30% to TechCrunch Founder Summit 1,000+ founders and investors come together at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 for a full day focused on growth, execution, and real-world scaling. Learn from founders and investors who have shaped the industry.Connect with peers navigating similar growth stages. Walk away with tactics you can apply immediatelyOffer ends March 13. San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 REGISTER NOW Mistral’s positioning is that its open source and customization bit will help enterprises adopt its voice models over competitors, as they can tune it the way they want. Topics AI, ElevenLabs, Mistral AI, text to speech, voice AI Ivan Mehta Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch.He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web. You can contact or verify outreach from Ivan by emailing im@ivanmehta.com or via encrypted message at ivan.42 on Signal. View Bio April 30 San Francisco, CA StrictlyVC kicks off the year in SF. Get in the room for unfiltered fireside chats with industry leaders, insider VC insights, and high-value connections that actually move the needle. Tickets are limited.REGISTER NOW Most Popular Google unveils TurboQuant, a new AI memory compression algorithm — and yes, the internet is calling it ‘Pied Piper’ Sarah Perez Kentucky woman rejects $26M offer to turn her farm into a data center Graham Starr Someone has publicly leaked an exploit kit that can hack millions of iPhones Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai Zack Whittaker Cursor admits its new coding model was built on top of Moonshot AI’s Kimi Anthony Ha Delve accused of misleading customers with ‘fake compliance’ Anthony Ha An exclusive tour of Amazon’s Trainium lab, the chip that’s won over Anthropic, OpenAI, even Apple Julie Bort Cyberattack on vehicle breathalyzer company leaves drivers stranded across the US Zack Whittaker Loading the next article Error loading the next article
Andrii Bidochko
CTO UBOS
Andrii Bidochko is an AI entrepreneur and researcher focused on AI agents, reinforcement learning, and autonomous systems. He writes about the technologies shaping the future of machine intelligence, from frontier models and agent architectures to real-world AI applications.