Reference · Updated 2026-10-27
Dessa AI Tracker: release status, price, API & access
Status board
Public availabilityNot released. Research preview only, announced October 23, 2026.
WaitlistOpen now on Block's official page (block.xyz/dessa). Joining is free.
Early accessGoing first to a small group of AI safety researchers. No public timeline announced.
PriceNot announced. Anyone charging for Dessa access today is not Block.
API / developer accessNot announced. No API, SDK or model weights have been published.
Public release dateNot announced.
Hardware it runs onLocally on a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max chip or better, faster than real time. Trained on a single NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 system.
What Dessa is — the confirmed facts
- A full-duplex, speech-to-speech AI model from Block (the company behind Square and Cash App).
- Trained from scratch on human conversation audio only — no text, no pretrained models. Speech goes in, speech comes out, with nothing converted to text in the middle.
- It hears and produces emotion, sarcasm and laughter — it can laugh mid-sentence, backchannel while you talk, and be interrupted naturally.
- Built by a small Block research lab founded by former members of Toronto startup Dessa (acquired by Square in February 2020), led by Ragavan Thurairatnam and reporting to Jack Dorsey.
- The lead researcher has described it as a potential "GPT-3 moment for speech."
Timeline
- February 2020 — Square acquires Toronto machine-learning startup Dessa.
- October 23, 2026 — Block unveils Dessa as a research preview; the waitlist opens; early access promised first to a small group of AI safety researchers.
- October 27, 2026 — This tracker launches on DessaAI Daily and is checked every day against official sources.
Writing about Dessa AI?
You are welcome to cite or link this tracker — it is maintained daily so your readers always land on the current status instead of a stale launch-day article. For the official source, see Block's Dessa page. For daily coverage, see our latest articles.
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