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- Smallest.ai Secures $8M Seed for Voice AI
Smallest.ai Secures $8M Seed for Voice AI
🔊 Soundcheck
Smallest.ai lands $8M to turbocharge enterprise voice AI
David AI Secures $50M to Power Audio AI
Telnyx Adds Voice AI to Key SaaS Tools
Glia Unveils Rapid, Life‑Like Voice AI for Banking
Read time: 5 minutes
🔥 Hot Mic
Big moves, deep dives, and standout stories.
Smallest.ai raised an $8M seed led by Sierra Ventures to supercharge high‑speed, multilingual enterprise voice agents.
Smallest.ai just closed an $8 million seed round led by Sierra Ventures, with support from 3one4 Capital and Better Capital. The funding will let the startup push its goal of ultra‑fast, production‑ready multilingual voice agents into contact centers and beyond.
What makes their pitch compelling is that they own the full voice stack—from speech recognition and understanding to synthesis—delivering human‑level speed and emotional nuance. Their models, like the Lightning TTS engine (~100 ms latency) and Electron model (~10× faster time‑to‑first‑byte than GPT‑4.1 Mini), are built for scale and vertical customization.
Already, Smallest.ai is powering millions of call minutes monthly in banking and financial services across the U.S. and India. With this capital, they’ll broaden into retail, healthcare, and IT, pushing toward a future where voice AI is swift, expressive, and ready for real enterprise use.
Key Points:
Raised $8M seed round led by Sierra Ventures, joined by 3one4 Capital and Better Capital
Owns full-stack voice AI—speech recognition, understanding, and synthesis
Lightning TTS boasts ~100 ms latency; Electron model beats GPT‑4.1 Mini byte‑time
Currently handles millions of minutes monthly in US and India contact centers
Takeaway: By owning every layer of voice AI, Smallest.ai offers enterprises fast, secure, and emotionally aware voice agents—scalable and customizable by industry, deployable in days, and now armed with fresh funding to reach new sectors globally.
David AI raised $50 million in Series B to expand its research-driven audio datasets for speech AI.
David AI, a San Francisco audio data research lab founded in 2024, has just closed a $50 million Series B round co‑led by Meritech and NVIDIA, bringing its total funding to around $80 million. The startup specializes in building high‑quality, diverse audio datasets that capture the nuance of human speech—tone, emotion, accent, dialect and context—and applies rigorous research methods to curate and evaluate them at scale. Its real‑world data underpins voice AI models across domains, and now with fresh capital it’s bulking up research operations, engineering talent, and collaborations with AI labs and hardware partners worldwide to improve real‑world model performance. David AI is betting big on audio as AI’s natural interface, aiming to power intuitive assistants, wearables, robots and generative media.
Key Points:
Raised $50 million Series B led by Meritech and NVIDIA
Total funding reaches approximately $80 million
Focuses on research‑grade diverse audio datasets for speech AI
Funding will scale teams, research ops, and global AI partnerships
Takeaway: This round underscores that as AI advances, the bottleneck isn’t models but the high‑fidelity, context‑rich audio data needed to teach machines to truly understand human speech—and David AI is positioning itself as the key infrastructure provider in that space.
Telnyx now integrates its Voice AI agents with ServiceNow, Salesforce, JIRA, Zendesk, and more via one API layer.
Telnyx has rolled out new integrations that connect its Voice AI Agents directly with enterprise platforms like ServiceNow, Salesforce, JIRA, Zendesk, HubSpot, GitHub, and Greenhouse. Powered through Merge’s unified API, these connections let users update records, manage tickets, or trigger workflows simply by speaking. Everything runs through Telnyx’s full-stack voice infrastructure—its own private network and GPU-backed AI—delivering fast, secure, and natural-feeling automation. These Voice AI integrations are available immediately via the Telnyx Mission Control Portal, with more connectors coming later.
Key Points:
Voice AI Agents now integrate with ServiceNow, Salesforce, JIRA, Zendesk, HubSpot, GitHub, Greenhouse.
Merge API platform streamlines connection to enterprise tools.
Operate on Telnyx’s private global telephony network and colocated GPUs.
Available today in Mission Control Portal, more integrations planned soon.
Takeaway: By embedding Voice AI directly into core SaaS tools via Telnyx’s own network and Merge’s API, organizations can automate tasks through natural speech without switching interfaces—fast, secure, and scalable.
Glia launched a Voice AI that mimics human pace and clarity, doubling speed and easing frontline workloads.
Glia introduced its next‑generation Voice AI at Interact 2025, blending natural, human‑like pacing with industry‑leading responsiveness. It’s twice as fast as other solutions and zeroes in on realism and reliability. The system excels in noisy settings with advanced noise cancellation, highly accurate transcription, and stringent against misinformation. Routine banking calls are handled fully, boosting staff capacity by up to 70% and enabling meaningful customer relationships. When a call needs human care, the AI seamlessly hands off with complete context, maintaining service fluidity. It’s also designed to slot into existing CCaaS setups or run within Glia’s own ecosystem.
Key Points:
Voice GVA responds at human‑like speed, twice as fast as competitors
Advanced noise cancellation ensures clarity in any environment
Zero‑hallucination design guarantees compliance and accuracy
Resolves routine calls end‑to‑end, raising frontline capacity 70%
Takeaway: Glia’s Voice AI brings bank and credit union phone support into a new era—realistic, fast, reliable, and built for regulated environments—freeing teams to focus on high‑value customer care rather than routine transactions.
🎙️ Mic Drop
What else is making noise in voice AI.
Infinx invests in Voxology AI, advancing voice-automated solutions for healthcare patient access and revenue cycle management in the US. (hitconsultant.net)
Slack will soon support conversational AI agents integrated with business workflow, accelerating mainstream adoption of enterprise voice bots. (siliconangle.com)
Benetics AI expands its construction site voice assistant across US and Canada, targeting jobsite productivity and documentation automation. (aijourn.com)
Apna.co launches BlueMachines.ai, a new vertical for scalable voice-based AI agents aimed at rapid enterprise deployment. (entrackr.com)
Step-by-step guide for running Dia-1.6B, a new open-source TTS alternative to ElevenLabs, locally for customizable speech synthesis. (vocal.media)
Square merchants gain streamlined AI voice ordering functionality plus new Bitcoin payment features, bridging voice AI and fintech. (techcrunch.com)
AI-Agent.pro debuts enterprise conversational AI platform for autonomous, human-like sales and customer engagement over phone channels. (openpr.com)
Tata Communications unveils a low-latency, multilingual voice AI platform for BFSI customer service, supporting 40+ languages globally. (aninews.in)
Deepgram is highlighted for real-time, accurate transcriptions in regulated industries, deepening its presence through AWS Marketplace. (techrepublic.com)
Cookiy AI secures funding to advance its voice AI research platform, supporting speech tech experimentation and developer tooling. (mrweb.com)
PolyAI's CEO discusses next-gen voice AI ambitions, backed by Nvidia, pointing toward hybrid European/US leadership in speech models. (tech.eu)
Zeta Global launches Athena™, a superintelligent conversational agent designed for marketing automation and deeper multi-modal engagement. (martechcube.com)