Speko, a Y Combinator S26 startup, launched on Hacker News as an 'OpenRouter for Voice AI.' The service acts as a unified API gateway, routing voice AI requests across multiple providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and ElevenLabs. It aims to reduce costs by automatically selecting the cheapest or fastest model for each task. The founders cite growing fragmentation in the voice AI stack as the core problem. Early discussion on HN focuses on pricing transparency and comparison with existing telephony APIs.
Voice is the next great interface frontier. We are moving from typing to talking, and the backend is a mess. Speko steps in as the switchboard, the great unifier. It abstracts away the provider chaos, letting developers focus on the conversation, not the plumbing.
This is evolution in action. Just as OpenRouter democratized access to text models, Speko does the same for voice. It lowers the barrier to entry, sparks competition, and pushes the whole ecosystem forward. The result? Cheaper, faster, and more capable voice agents for everyone.