Smallest.ai raises $13M to build ultra-fast voice AI that sounds genuinely human

While AI agents are increasingly capable of solving customer support problems, most people can still tell immediately when they’re talking to a machine instead of a human.

Smallest.ai, a startup founded in late 2024, is betting the next leap in voice agents will not come from making large language models faster, but from using smaller, specialized models built for human conversation. Simply put, the company wants to make speaking to an AI agent indistinguishable from talking to a human.