Smart Speakers Podcast

Nikhil Gupta is the cofounder and CTO of VAPI. He’s been in the trenches building and scaling one of the biggest voice platforms in the world.
On this episode, he explains how VAPI aims to create a voice-default future where we talk to all our computers—and goes deep into every step of VAPI’s voice pipelines and the technical challenges along the way.
Some highlights:
☎️ Massive scale: VAPI has processed 44 million voice calls on their platform, growing from a COVID-era one-click Zoom meeting button to a full voice infrastructure company used by thousands of developers.
⚡️ Latency matters: Voice AI needs to respond within 500 milliseconds to feel natural to humans. That means cleaning audio, detecting when users are done speaking, transcribing text, generating responses, converting to speech, and handling interruptions—all within a fraction of a second.
🗣️Voice-first future: Nikhil is betting a future where voice becomes our default interface with all computing systems.
If you’ve ever wondered how voice API actually works—this is the episode for you.
Chapters
00:00 - Introducing VAPI
04:42 - Pivoting through COVID
05:42 - ChatGPT existential crisis
08:33 - Technical challenges of voice
12:42 - Anatomy of a voice call
14:46 - Knowing when someone is done speaking
18:37 - Routing to the fastest model
22:07 - Knowledge and context injection
26:47 - The text-to-speech bottleneck
31:14 - Handling interruptions gracefully
33:43 - The 500-millisecond barrier
36:56 - The DNS latency discovery
39:25 - Scaling the team and what's next
Links
* VAPI
* Nikhil Gupta on LinkedIn
* VAPI on Product Hunt
* Stratechery by Ben Thompson - Recommended reading from Nikhil


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Varun Khurana wants every job candidate to have the best possible chance to prove themselves for every job they apply to. He’s been in the trenches building with voice AI for 2+ years, and had some great nuggets to share:
* 💬 How Wayfaster started: “Wayfaster started out as a way to interview your entire pipeline in a couple seconds... the only way you can really do that is using voice AI."
* ⛔️Why AI video avatars are a no-go: "We tried avatars and every candidate hated it... I think it just makes candidates feel dumb. It's just like, why am I talking to an avatar? Like how stupid do you think I am?"
* 📑How AI interviews give candidates a chance: "Candidates have just gotten really accustomed to getting this default auto-reject email... At least here, I know that if I do a good job on the interview, I have a shot at this opportunity."
* 🐻Why he’s bearish consumer voice AI: "I'm actually a little more bearish on the consumer voice AI use cases. I like voice AI in constrained environments, like B2B, there's an amount of intent... I don't think people are going to want to be talking to their phones all the time."
Hope you enjoy the conversation! As always you can subscribe at https://smartspeakers.fm.
Chapters
0:00 Welcome and intro
1:32 First big AI aha moment
5:08 Career background
7:40 Exploring startup ideas
10:34 How WayFaster was born
14:21 Initial target markets
16:45 Candidate response to AI interviews
19:07 Benefits for recruiters and candidates
23:30 How AI is transforming recruiting
26:51 The two-sided recruiting game
31:05 Why Varun is bearish on consumer voice AI
35:09 Future generations and AI adoption
38:09 Content recommendations and closing

Links
* WayFaster Website: wayfaster.com
* Varun Khurana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vkhurana2/
* South Park Commons
* Deepgram
* Charles Rubenfeld's Newsletter


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.smartspeakers.fm

Much of my childhood was spent in my basement, dialing up other people’s computers to trade messages and play games.
Kwin Kramer from Daily remembers that time, too—and says today's voice AI moment feels just like those early internet days. That sense of endless possibilities is back.
His open-source project PipeCat has become the standard toolkit for voice agents. What began as an experiment now powers voice AI for OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and countless startups, making conversations feel natural and responsive.
Some highlights:
* That early internet feeling is back: "1995 to 1999 felt a certain way. It never felt that way again until 2023 to 2025."
* GPT-4 transformed Daily's business by removing a key bottleneck: "Previously you needed two humans for a conversation. Now you only need one, maybe not even that."
* Voice AI's killer feature? Latency matters: "If response times are long, you're in that uncanny valley where people get uncomfortable."
* Kwin's bold prediction: "We're all going to have friends in our group chats that aren't human because LLMs are actually really entertaining."
Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
Links
Daily: https://daily.co/PipeCat: https://pipecat.ai/Kwin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kwindla
Chapters
0:00 Intro
2:02 First AI aha moment
5:43 MIT Media Lab beginnings
9:05 BBS and door games
15:26 The AllAfrica journey
18:54 Starting Daily
21:13 COVID's impact on WebRTC
22:36 GPT-4 transformation
31:26 Building voice for LLMs
35:17 PipeCat's key challenges
44:10 The future of speech-to-speech
47:10 Voice AI adoption trends
52:34 Vibe coding revolution
56:11 What's next for PipeCat


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.smartspeakers.fm

This week, Tom Shapland shares his journey from agriculture tech to founding Canonical, a tool that helps voice AI developers understand and improve conversations by mapping call stages.
Tom has deep experience in the voice world—we loved this conversation and we’re sure you will too!
Links
https://canonical.chathttps://x.com/Tom_Shaplandhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-shapland-b4494212/

Chapters
0:00 - Intro
1:05 - Welcome and first AI moment
3:03 - Computer vision for thirsty plants
5:50 - Explaining AI to farmers
7:52 - Hardware is hard
8:31 - Non-VC shaped business struggles
16:51 - Starting a new company
19:41 - From metrics to conversation stages
22:42 - Voice AI evolution
26:40 - Balancing determinism and freedom
29:53 - Who uses Canonical and when
32:39 - Don't make your agent spell anything
35:52 - Zero to 80% is easy, production is hard
39:28 - Future of voice AI adoption
42:21 - Book recommendations and closing


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.smartspeakers.fm

Voice AI is having its moment, but pretty soon every company will be a voice company.
Olivia Moore is the author of a16z’s market report on voice AI agents, which is a must-read if you’re interested in the space.
She’s an amazing thinker and we cover a lot in this conversation, including:
* Olivia's thesis that Voice AI is in it’s “internet in 1999” moment
* The "wedge" strategy: using Voice AI to get in the door before transforming broader business operations
* How recruiting became a surprising early adopter of Voice AI (candidates actually prefer it)
* Voice AI's unique ability to handle compliance and stay on-script in regulated industries
* Shifting from per-minute pricing to transaction-based fees or success metrics
* Why big tech platforms (OpenAI, Google) won't dominate vertical-specific voice applications
Links
* Olivia on X: https://x.com/omooretweets (must-follow!)
* Her market report on voice AI agents
* Dr Sbaitso emulator - this was packaged with new Sound Blaster sound cards! Strange stuff.
Chapters0:00 Intro and welcome1:24 Olivia's first AI "aha" moments 3:42 Coolest non-voice AI tools6:29 How Olivia got into the Voice AI space10:03 From consumer to enterprise13:50 DMV-bot16:22 Voice AI as a wedge20:57 Traction in the voice market24:24 Voice AI for recruiting28:59 Why AI doesn't go off-script31:03 Better experiences for candidates and customers33:24 The future of call centers37:02 Bear cases for Voice AI41:25 Open problems44:29 Pricing47:12 Working with twin sister Justine50:11 Three things Olivia's excited about
Subscribe and listen: https://smartspeakers.fm


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.smartspeakers.fm