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Kamath: Voice AI expands established markets instead of inventing new ones

Sudarshan Kamath · Where SMALL models will Win | Sudarshan kamath, Smallest ai · Mar 6, 2026 · at 57:58

Sudarshan Kamath, founder of Smallest AI, explains why voice AI is commercially resilient compared to speculative AI applications.

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“The voice space is a existing market that is getting disrupted. You're not inventing a market. You already have a dictation in mobile apps, which sucks. You already have that desktop note, which was really bad. Now with generative AI, you have much better dictation. You already have IVR based voice agents, which are really bad. Now with generative AI, it's becoming very natural, right? So you're not inventing a new market. You are taking an existing market making it much better and by that you're also making it larger.”

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