He bet against trillion-parameter models when every VC said he was insane—now NVIDIA is publishing papers proving him right.

Sudarshan from Smallest.ai cracked enterprise voice AI by ignoring Silicon Valley's foundation model obsession. While competitors chased infinite compute, his autonomous vehicle background revealed the truth: compact models handling life-or-death navigation decisions outperform bloated systems requiring massive resources.

The contrarian thesis almost killed fundraising until one viral launch changed everything. World's fastest text-to-speech hits millions of views, multiple term sheets arrive the same day, $8M seed closes in two weeks. But thousands of curious developers meant zero revenue.

The real breakthrough wasn't technical—it was understanding enterprise buyers. Companies don't want your API documentation. They want consultants who solve problems using AI, not AI companies hunting for use cases. The transformation from model provider to solution consultant unlocked Fortune 500 deals.

You'll discover the playbook for contrarian deep tech bets, why enterprise AI adoption is messier than anyone admits

🤝 Connect with Sudarshan

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/sudarshankamath/
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/smallest/
• https://smallest.ai
• https://www.youtube.com/@smallest_ai
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/brentgleeson/2025/04/28/how-business-leaders-are-unlocking-ais-full-potential/