Smallest.ai Raises $13M Series A to Build Human-Sounding Voice AI for Customer Support

TechCrunch · United States · Jul 31, 2026

Smallest.ai, a voice AI startup founded in late 2024, has closed a $13M Series A led by Seligman Ventures, bringing total funding to over $21M. The company develops small, specialized voice models designed to eliminate conversational latency and mimic natural human speech patterns, targeting enterprise customer support use cases. Customers include RingCentral and Truecaller, with competitors including ElevenLabs and Cartesia. For staffing firms, the advancement of near-human voice AI agents signals continued automation pressure on high-volume customer service roles that have historically been a placement pipeline.