In this season 15 opener of The Room Podcast, we speak with Russ d'Sa, co-founder and CEO of LiveKit, a platform for building real-time voice, video, and AI agents. LiveKit began as an open-source project for live audio and video. As developers adopted it, the team built cloud infrastructure to help them scale. A second turning point came when OpenAI used LiveKit to build a voice interface for ChatGPT, revealing how technology built to connect people could also connect people with AI.Russ traces his path from growing up around computers in Canada and Silicon Valley to founding a startup, working at 23andMe and Twitter, and building LiveKit. He shares the unexpected relationships and product decisions that shaped the company, including why he calls it the “accidental AI company.” In this conversation, Russ explains why speaking with an AI requires a different kind of infrastructure from typing to one. He also looks ahead to physical AI and reflects on how becoming a father has changed the way he thinks about success and his values.