Uzbek founder launches Speko on Product Hunt

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.uz) — Uzbek founder Beknazar Abdikamalov, who was previously accepted into the Y Combinator accelerator, has launched his startup Speko on Product Hunt. Founded in San Francisco in 2026, the company is developing infrastructure for Voice AI and helps developers select effective voice AI service providers based on language and use case.

Speko provides a single API that selects an optimal combination of Speech-to-Text, LLM and Text-to-Speech models. The platform regularly tests new models using several metrics, including Word Error Rate, latency, Time to First Token and cost per minute. The results are published publicly on benchmarks.speko.ai.

The system also automatically changes request routing when another model begins delivering better results. This means developers do not have to rewrite their integrations. If one provider experiences an outage, Speko can switch to a backup option in less than 500 milliseconds.

“No provider can be the best at everything, and quality depends heavily on the language. We route each request to the stack that is performing best right now and openly publish the supporting data on benchmarks.speko.ai,” Abdikamalov said.

The idea for Speko emerged from Abdikamalov’s experience at Hupo, where he spent four years as co-founder and chief technology officer. The company raised US$14 million and developed Voice AI solutions for projects involving Morgan Stanley, Prudential, HSBC and Grab that operated in multiple languages.

According to Abdikamalov, the Hupo team had to manually compare speech models for each new market. That experience later became the basis for Speko.

Before Hupo, Abdikamalov worked as a software engineer at Amazon and was one of the first engineers at Tridge. He entered Y Combinator on his fourth attempt and became the first solo founder from Uzbekistan to be accepted into the accelerator.

“I want children in Nukus and Tashkent to see that you don’t have to be born in Silicon Valley to build a company there. You just have to start creating,” the entrepreneur said.

Speko currently has four engineers from Central Asia on its team. The Product Hunt launch marks another stage in the startup’s development. Initial votes and user support on the platform affect the project’s position in its ranking.

Users can support Speko on the project’s Product Hunt page.