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NVIDIA’s Canary & Parakeet Models: Solving AI’s Multilingual Speech Challenges

  • Writer: subrata sarkar
    subrata sarkar
  • Aug 16
  • 2 min read


The Challenge: AI’s Language Divide

Despite the global reach of AI, most speech models only support a handful of dominant languages—leaving thousands of others digitally excluded. This gap affects millions, especially in smaller European and Asian markets where voice tech remains inaccessible.

🛠️ NVIDIA’s Breakthrough: Granary + Open Models

To bridge this divide, NVIDIA launched the Granary dataset, a massive open-source library with:

  • 1 million hours of multilingual audio

    • 650K hours for speech recognition

    • 350K hours for translation

  • Covers 25 European languages, including Croatian, Estonian, Maltese, and more.

Built on Granary are two standout models:

Canary-1b-v2

  • 1 billion parameters

  • Handles transcription + translation

  • 10x faster than similar models

  • WER: ~6.35%, RTFx: ~1045.75

Parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3

  • 600 million parameters

  • Real-time transcription + language detection

  • WER: ~6.05%, RTFx: ~3386.02

These models top Hugging Face’s multilingual speech AI leaderboards.

Smarter Training with NeMo

NVIDIA partnered with CMU and Fondazione Bruno Kessler to automate data processing using the NeMo Speech Data Processor. This pipeline:

  • Converts raw audio into structured training data

  • Cuts data requirements by 50%

  • Speeds up model development and deployment

Benchmarking: Canary vs Whisper vs STT-2.6b

Model Name

Languages

WER

Speed (RTFx)

Strengths

Canary-1b-v2

25

~6.35%

~1045.75

Fast, multilingual, bidirectional AST

Parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3

25

~6.05%

~3386.02

Real-time, auto language ID

Whisper-large-v3

98+

~6.4%

~2–5

Broad support, GPT integration

Kyutai STT-2.6b-en

English

~6.4%

~88.37

Timestamping, VAD

Why This Matters

NVIDIA’s models are not just faster—they’re more inclusive. Developers in cities like Riga or Zagreb can now build:

  • Multilingual chatbots

  • Real-time customer support agents

  • Voice-enabled apps in native languages

And with open access, startups and researchers can deploy these models 100x cheaper than proprietary APIs.

Final Thoughts

NVIDIA’s Granary-powered models are a leap toward linguistic equity in AI. As voice interfaces become central to digital experiences, supporting diverse languages isn’t just a technical upgrade—it’s a moral imperative.

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