Voice AI startup Smallest raises $8-M led by Sierra Ventures

Mumbai- and San Francisco, CA (USA)-based Smallest AI has raised USD 8 million (around INR 70.9 crore) in its seed funding round led by Sierra Ventures. The round also saw participation from 3one4 Capital, Better Capital, Upsparks Capital, Schema Ventures, DeVC, Peercheque, Mission Street Capital, Boris Wertz (founder, Version One Ventures), Raveen Sastry (founding partner, Multiply Ventures), and Shyamal Hitesh Anadkat (applied AI, OpenAI).The startup would deploy the fresh capital to build the foundation of enterprise voice AI.Founded by Akshat Mandloi and Sudarshan Kamath in 2023, Smallest builds hyper-realistic voice agents and high-quality text-to-speech (TTS) models for various applications. It claims to generate 10 seconds of speech in just 100 milliseconds, enabling ultra-realistic voicebots with sub-second responsiveness.Currently serving 5K+ small and medium businesses and enterprises across India and the US, Smallest AI supports English, Hindi, and 30+ languages.Earlier, the startup had raised about USD 1.7 million from 3one4 Capital, Upsparks Capital, and DeVC. Besides, it was also part of the AWS Generative AI Accelerator programme.