computer science

LiveKit

LiveKit is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand LiveKit rather than just read about it. In short: LiveKit is an American technology company that provides software for building voice, video, and physical AI agents, along with cloud infrastructure for those agents. The company is based in San Francisco, California.

Key takeaways

LiveKit belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect LiveKit to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of LiveKit from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

LiveKit is an American technology company that provides software for building voice, video, and physical AI agents, along with cloud infrastructure for those agents. The company is based in San Francisco, California.

History LiveKit was founded in 2021 by David Zhao and Russ d'Sa, who serves as chief executive officer. It began as an open-source project for developers, to simplify the process of building real-time audio and video applications, to transmit audio and video to users in real time, using the WebRTC protocol. Demand for a cloud-hosted version of LiveKit from Spotify, Oracle, and Reddit led d'Sa and Zhao to start a company to both steward the open-source project and create a managed cloud version, LiveKit Cloud. Shortly after OpenAI's launch of ChatGPT, d'Sa demoed a voice interface he created using LiveKit's technology with the chatbot. OpenAI's discovery of this demo ultimately led to a deal between the two companies to use LiveKit Cloud for ChatGPT's voice and subsequent advanced voice modes. Other customers include Salesforce, Tesla, Meta, Microsoft, SpaceXAI, and 911 emergency services. The software also underpins Visio, a video conferencing tool built by the government of France using LiveKit. In iOS 18, LiveKit is embedded into FaceTime for emergency calls.

Technology The company provides software and services for building and running voice, video, and physical AI agents, allowing customers to build AI agents and run them on its network. It also provides network infrastructure hosted on cloud providers, for services like audio streaming. For voice interactions, LiveKit transfers audio to an AI model, which converts the audio to text, processes it through a language model, and converts the response to speech. Its Agent Framework allows developers to attach Python or Node.js programs to LiveKit rooms as participants, to enable interactive AI behaviors such as voice processing.

Funding In December 2021, LiveKit announced a $7 million seed round led by Redpoint Ventures, followed by an additional $8 million seed round in 2022. In June 2024, LiveKit raised $22 million in series A funding led by Altimeter Capital. In April 2025, LiveKit raised $45 million in a series B funding round led by Altimeter, at a $345 million valuation. In January 2026, LiveKit raised $100 million in a series C funding round led by Index Ventures, bringing its total amount raised to $183 million and valuing the company at $1 billion.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with LiveKit

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what LiveKit claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to LiveKit before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about LiveKit ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of LiveKit

In research: LiveKit appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses LiveKit in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: LiveKit is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American companies established in 2021, Artificial intelligence companies, Artificial intelligence industry in the United States, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for LiveKit outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study LiveKit in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what LiveKit means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain LiveKit out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is LiveKit in simple terms?

Why does LiveKit matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study LiveKit?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on LiveKit.