Smallest.ai raised 13 million dollars to develop a voice AI model for customer support
Startup Smallest.ai raised 13 million dollars in Series A funding (led by Seligman Ventures) to develop a small, latency-free voice model for real-time customer support, bringing its total funding to over 21 million dollars.
Startup Smallest.ai, founded in late 2024, raised 13 million dollars in a Series A round led by Seligman Ventures, with participation from Sierra Ventures and 3one4 Capital. According to the company, total funding for the startup has thus exceeded 21 million dollars. The company is developing a small voice model designed for real-time conversational AI agents that, according to founder Sudarshan Kamath, is intended to mimic the way people simultaneously listen, think and speak during a conversation, including the ability to be interrupted.
According to Kamath, the difference from large language models lies in response time: a large model waits to process the entire input prompt at once, which is fine in a text chat but causes unnatural pauses in a voice conversation. The model from Smallest.ai is intended to serve as a layer for conversations on specific topics with virtually zero response latency. If a query goes beyond the knowledge base of this small model, the system passes it to a large foundation model, according to the company, and briefly puts the customer on hold in the meantime, much as a person would when looking up information. Kamath expects this hybrid approach — a small model for real-time interaction and an offline LLM for more complex queries — to become the standard for AI agents in general.
According to the company, the model focuses on the specifics of voice communication, such as handling different accents, supporting a range of languages and working in noisy environments. Current customers include RingCentral and Truecaller, and Kamath said that any company providing customer support is a potential customer, including Sierra and Decagon. As a reason why such companies would not develop their own voice model, he said that achieving high quality in voice would be a departure from their core business. Smallest.ai competes with ElevenLabs and Cartesia and regional players such as Sarvam, while, unlike some competitors, focusing exclusively on real-time conversational voice agents, rather than, for example, dubbing or podcasts.
Why it matters
For companies running customer support operations, this is another specialized provider of voice AI agents, positioning itself around low latency and a hybrid approach that uses a large model only for more complex queries — relevant when comparing providers such as ElevenLabs or Cartesia. The news has no direct practical impact on individuals; it is a corporate investment and product development event involving a technology provider.
Relevant practical impact
What this means
For a business
A specialized player has joined ElevenLabs, Cartesia and Sarvam in the market for voice AI models for customer support, expanding the options available to companies when choosing a provider for real-time voice agents.
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