Funding

AI Startup Smallest.ai Scores $13M in Series A Funding

Aug 1, 2026 | By Devin Jacobs

SUMMARY

Smallest.ai has secured $13 million in Series A funding led by Seligman Ventures.
Smallest.ai develops real-time voice AI infrastructure with advanced speech recognition and speech-to-speech technology for enterprise applications.
The company will use the funding to expand its enterprise voice AI platform across financial services, healthcare, contact centers, and BPO industries.

Smallest.ai, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of real time voice AI infrastructure for enterprises, has raised $13 million in a Series A round, bringing total funding to over $21 million.

The round was led by Seligman Ventures with participation from Sierra Ventures and 3one4 Capital.

The fresh capital will be used to expand the company's enterprise voice AI platform across financial services, healthcare, contact centers, and business process outsourcing (BPO).

Funding Snapshot

Metric	Details
Fundraise Amount	$13 Million
Funding Round	Series A
Total Funding Raised	Over $21 Million
Lead Investor	Seligman Ventures
Other Investors	Sierra Ventures, 3one4 Capital
Company	Smallest.ai
Sector	Artificial Intelligence, Voice AI
Headquarters	San Francisco, California, USA

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About Smallest.ai

Founded in 2023, by Sudarshan Kamath and Akshat Mandloi, Smallest.ai is a foundational AI research company building next generation real time voice AI infrastructure for enterprises. The startup develops advanced speech recognition, speech synthesis and speech to speech technologies that enable natural, human like AI conversations across customer service, healthcare, financial services and other communication intensive industries.

The companys platform focuses on reducing latency, improving conversational quality and enabling enterprises to deploy reliable AI powered voice agents at scale. With nearly 60 employees, Smallest.ai is expanding rapidly to meet growing enterprise demand.

Core offerings include:

Real-time voice AI infrastructure
Speech recognition technology
AI-powered speech generation
Speech-to-speech conversational systems

Core Technologies / Products / Services

Capability / Product	Application / Use Case
Voice AI Platform	Enterprise customer interactions
Speech Recognition	Real-time voice understanding
Speech Generation	Human-like AI voice responses
Speech-to-Speech AI	Natural conversational automation

Leadership Comments

"Voice AI has gone through three generations of innovation, but each generation has ultimately hit the same wall," said Sudarshan Kamath, founder and CEO of Smallest.ai. "The industry has focused on making models larger when the real challenge is architectural. Humans don't wait for someone to finish speaking before they begin thinking. We listen, think, and respond simultaneously. Voice AI needs to work the same way.

"Voice AI is creating a real impact on life and work," said Ashish Kakran, Managing Partner at Seligman Ventures. "Developers now increasingly talk to their machines instead of typing code. Smallest.ai is taking a fundamentally different approach to the category by rethinking architecture itself. Customers get an efficient vertically integrated stack and don't need to waste time stitching models together.