Vedant Dwivedi, Co-Founder & CEO at AndAI Hub. AndAI Hub is a cutting-edge AI marketplace that connects businesses with the best AI plugins and solutions tailored to their specific needs. They cater their services to startups, MSMEs, and enterprises by understanding each client's unique business domain and recommending optimal AI integrations.

Their platform showcases a curated selection of third-party AI products and services, alongside their own in-house developed plugins, agents, workflows, and solutions. At AndAI Hub, they pride themselves on delivering customized AI solutions for every use case, ensuring their clients harness the full potential of AI to drive innovation and growth in their respective industries.

Episode Highlights:
- Vedant emphasized that real-time AI applications require both pre- and post-processing guardrails to ensure safety, moderation, and compliance. It's not just about the LLM's intelligence — a logic layer is crucial to manage and filter input and output before and after model inference.

- AndAI Hub solves enterprise AI problems through a three-step architecture:

*Builder: Catalogs and processes scattered enterprise data (SharePoint, SQL, Excel, etc.).
*Sigma: Builds real-time, narrow-focus AI agents from this clean data.
*Flow: Creates workflows by connecting agents to collaborate and generate complex, real-time insights.

- Despite adding guardrails for pre- and post-prompt moderation, and AI Hub uses distributed processing to deliver secure, real-time voice agent responses within 4 seconds. This makes their solution practical for use cases like industrial voice interfaces and e-commerce order management.

- Vedant stressed that uncatalogued, messy data is the biggest reason many enterprises haven’t adopted real-time AI, even with the availability of advanced models like GPT. Builder helps solve this foundational issue by indexing, mapping, and understanding enterprise data before agents are deployed.

- And AI Hub built an AI-driven hiring pipeline for a recruitment firm:

*Resume analysis
*Voice interviews (powered by Deepgram)
*Video interviews with facial expression analysis
*Live coding assessments with an AI copilot
→ All stitched together in a workflow to automatically evaluate and shortlist candidates using multiple AI agents.

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Connect with Vedant Dwivedi:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vedant-dwivedi-60286b10a/
https://andaiplatforms.com/

Connect with Demetrios:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/

Connect with Deepgram:
https://deepgram.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram
https://x.com/deepgramai
https://www.facebook.com/deepgram/

Join the Deepgram Discord Server!
https://discord.com/invite/xWRaCDBtW4

Deepgram is a Voice AI platform for enterprise use cases – speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and speech-to-speech APIs for developers. 

Episode Highlights:
- Sharon shared her transition from working on automated candidate sourcing at Dover, where she first explored AI/ML in recruiting, to now leading voice-first product development at Deepgram. Her journey showcases how early AI tooling evolved into today’s voice-native applications.

- Sharon introduced Saga as a “Voice OS for developers,” a full Multimodal Conversational Program (MCP) client. It lets developers control their workflows through natural speech, connecting with multiple MCP servers and enabling Jarvis-like interactions with their systems.

- Saga enhances vibe coding by turning vague voice inputs like “build a voice AI app” into high-quality, detailed prompts for agents like Cursor. This results in more accurate and useful code, shortening the iteration loop between developer and AI assistant.

- Despite all the advancements, prompt design is still a bottleneck. Sharon likened LLMs to an intern in their first week — needing explicit, well-structured instructions to succeed. Chaining actions and mirroring tool names in prompts were some of the practical takeaways for boosting reliability.

- A major insight came from the shift in user context. Systems designed for humans (like JIRA) often lack the structured context agents need. Sharon emphasized how building for agent comprehension — not just human convenience — is key to the future of AI-native workflows.

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Connect with Sharon Yeh:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonyehh/
https://deepgram.com/
https://deepgram.com/ai-apps/deepgram-saga

Connect with Demetrios:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/

Connect with Deepgram:
https://deepgram.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram
https://x.com/deepgramai
https://www.facebook.com/deepgram/

Join the Deepgram Discord Server!
https://discord.com/invite/xWRaCDBtW4

Scott McIsaac & Len Landale, Co-Founders at Helios Core AI. Helios Core AI is a new, forward-thinking company offering a fresh take on driving outcomes with AI at scale. They focus on delivering practical, transformative AI solutions that simplify complexity, unlock insights, and optimize business performance. With a commitment to innovation and measurable results, they help organizations elevate their operations and achieve success in an AI-driven world.

Episode Highlights:
- Len Landale and Scott McIsaac left the corporate enterprise world to return to a startup environment focused on creativity, agility, and direct problem-solving. Their motivation lies in leveraging AI to transform the future of work, improve efficiency, and help businesses scale intelligently.

- Initially positioned as AI consultants, they quickly evolved into building an AI-first managed services platform, offering not just tools but ongoing support to ensure successful implementation, adoption, and ROI. The platform is tightly coupled with services to guide clients through AI deployment and scale.

- They emphasize a consultative approach to AI adoption—starting with data readiness and business problem identification. To avoid scope creep, they guide clients by organizing needs into:
*Must-haves
*Nice-to-haves
*Future vision
This structure helps clients focus and prioritize effectively.

- Contrary to their initial assumptions, small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) have shown strong appetite for AI adoption. One notable example is an SMB using a voice agent to fully manage rental equipment calls, freeing up staff time and improving customer experience—demonstrating real-world ROI in efficiency.

- They’re launching Kokoro, a voice AI product that helps people preserve and interact with the memories and personalities of loved ones. Inspired by grief and family separation, Kokoro allows users to hear loved ones' voices, share stories, or even read bedtime stories remotely, leveraging AI’s emotional and conversational capabilities in a deeply human way.

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Connect with Scott & Len:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/scmcisaac/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/len-landale/
https://www.helios-core.com/

Connect with Demetrios:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/

Connect with Deepgram:
https://deepgram.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram
https://x.com/deepgramai
https://www.facebook.com/deepgram/

Join the Deepgram Discord Server!
https://discord.com/invite/xWRaCDBtW4

Anshuman Singh, Co-Founder at Think41. Think41 is a full-stack Generative AI consulting firm founded by the creators of HashedIn (acquired by Deloitte US), specializing in building secure, compliant, and human-like AI agents. We partner with enterprises and high-growth startups to co-engineer AI products spanning conversational AI, voice systems, and agentic platforms.

Episode Highlights:
- Anshuman breaks down the massive difference between flashy demos and production-ready voice agents. Latency, natural conversational flow, cultural nuance, and error handling are all critical pain points when deploying voice AI at enterprise scale—especially in a complex market like India.

- To deal with latency and make interactions more natural, Anshuman shares a clever UX trick: adding verbal cues like "aha" or short acknowledgments. These subtle responses reassure users that the bot is listening and working, creating a smoother, more human-like experience.

- From shortening bot responses to crafting open-ended questions, the team at Think 41 is rethinking UX for a voice-first world. Anshuman highlights how designing for audio interfaces demands empathy, brevity, and a deep understanding of human psychology.

- Think 41 is building a system where voice interaction is paired with a visual interface—while users speak to the bot, the assistant generates clickable UI elements like decision cards and design specs in real time. Think Jarvis for product discovery and planning.

- A fascinating insight: users treat voice agents differently than humans—often with less focus and more distraction. Anshuman predicts that companies will need new social contracts, even policies, around how voice AI is used in professional settings, especially as it takes on more meaningful work.

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Connect with Anshuman Singh:
https://think41.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/think41/?originalSubdomain=in
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anshum4n/

Connect with Demetrios:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/

Connect with Deepgram:
https://deepgram.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram
https://twitter.com/deepgramai
https://www.facebook.com/deepgram/

Join the Deepgram Discord Server!
https://discord.com/invite/xWRaCDBtW4

Samuel Pearton, Chief Marketing Officer at Polyhedra. Polyhedra Network is building foundational infrastructure for trust and scalability in AI and blockchain systems to enable secure, verifiable, high-performance applications. Led by a world-class team of engineers, researchers and business leaders from institutions such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Tsinghua University, Polyhedra’s deep expertize in zero-knowledge proofs and distributed systems underpins the development of our technical solutions.

Samuel Pearton is the Chief Marketing Officer at Polyhedra, driving the future of intelligence through its pioneering, high-performance technology. Drawing on decades of experience in tech, global marketing, and cross-cultural social commerce, Samuel understands that trust, scalability, and verifiability are essential to AI and blockchain.

Before officially joining Polyhedra’s executive team in October 2024, he played a key advisory role as the company secured $20 million in strategic funding at a $1 billion valuation. Prior to Polyhedra, Samuel founded PressPlay, a social commerce and engagement platform that connected athletes and celebrities—including Stephen Curry—with China’s fan economy.

Episode Highlights:
- Samuel shares his unique journey—from being an out-of-work musician in Australia to launching a startup in China focused on monetizing celebrity IP through digital channels. His early work with high-profile names like Steph Curry and Cristiano Ronaldo laid the foundation for his pivot into tech innovation.

- Samuel introduces Polyhedra and its mission to build infrastructure for verifiable AI using ZKML (Zero-Knowledge Machine Learning). The tech uses cryptographic proofs to ensure that AI models operate correctly and haven’t been tampered with—a critical guardrail as AI agents become more integrated into daily life.

- Samuel compares their technology to a seatbelt for AI—not always visible, but absolutely essential. ZKML acts as a mathematical "truth layer" that ensures the outputs of an AI model are trustworthy, especially in high-risk sectors like finance, healthcare, and robotics.

- Though many of the threats ZKML protects against haven’t materialized at scale yet, Samuel emphasizes the proactive nature of Polyhedra's mission. He highlights future use cases like AI agents making financial decisions or running household robots, where tamper-proof verification will be essential.

- Samuel gives a shoutout to Deepgram, which is collaborating with Polyhedra to develop verifiable voice applications. They’re also integrating Deepgram’s API into a growing community of blockchain builders, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible at the intersection of AI, voice, and cryptography.

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Connect with Samuel Pearton:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuelpearton/?originalSubdomain=uk
https://polyhedra.network/

Connect with Demetrios:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/

Connect with Deepgram:
https://deepgram.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram
https://twitter.com/deepgramai
https://www.facebook.com/deepgram/

Join the Deepgram Discord Server!
https://discord.com/invite/xWRaCDBtW4

Alex Levin, Co-Founder & CEO at Regal AI. Regal is the AI Agent Platform.

Generative AI Agents are transforming customer expectations and the types of customer experiences business can build. The biggest opportunity is in support, sales and operations calls at consumer businesses.

Episode Highlights:

- Alex challenges the long-standing “hide the phone number” mindset in contact centers. He argues that voice calls consistently outperform emails and texts in customer engagement, with far higher conversion and retention metrics when executed correctly.

- While many companies focus on building AI agents, Alex emphasizes that the real complexity lies in orchestration—pulling in customer data, handling routing, making API calls, and integrating with CRMs. Regal AI’s strength lies in building this full voice engagement stack.

- Regal’s AI agents now resolve ~97% of calls without needing a human handoff. This is a major leap from legacy benchmarks, which typically hover around 20–30%.

- Average handle time becomes less relevant with AI. Instead of optimizing for speed, Regal focuses on outcomes—like resolution, satisfaction, and conversion. Alex notes that AI often reduces call time by 30% anyway, while delivering better consistency and accuracy.

- Voice agents with personality outperform generic ones. Regal experiments with distinct agent styles—like playful, skeptical, or supportive—to mirror brand tone. Techniques like natural pauses, background noise, and tonal variation dramatically increase trust and engagement.

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Connect with Alex Levin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlevin1/
https://www.regal.ai/

Connect with Demetrios:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/

Connect with Deepgram:
https://deepgram.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram
https://twitter.com/deepgramai
https://www.facebook.com/deepgram/

Join the Deepgram Discord Server!
https://discord.com/invite/xWRaCDBtW4

Ilan Avner, Director of Product Management at AudioCodes. AudioCodes is a leading provider of advanced communications software, products and productivity solutions for the digital workplace. AudioCodes enables enterprises and service providers to build and operate all-IP voice networks for delivering unified communications, contact centers, and hosted business services, whether in the cloud or on premises.

Ilan Avner is a seasoned product leader with deep expertise in voice, telephony and  voice conversational AI. As Director of Product Management at AudioCodes, he drives the development of AI-powered voice solutions that connect contact centers with conversational platforms, enabling intelligent voice bots, live-agent assist tools, and seamless customer interactions. Ilan is passionate about transforming how businesses use voice to engage, automate, and scale customer communication.

Episode Highlights:
- Ilan emphasizes a “crawl, walk, run” approach for organizations exploring voice AI. Many start with call summarization due to its clear ROI and low friction—reducing agent wrap-up time from minutes to seconds and laying the groundwork for more complex use cases.

- While LLMs and transcription models are increasingly powerful, Ilan points out that telephony integration and voice orchestration remain significant hurdles. AudioCodes steps in to bridge the gap between voice systems, STT/TTS engines, and conversational platforms.

- Ilan highlights the real-world complexity of multilingual environments, such as Spanish mixed with English or code-switching in Hindi. These nuances often trip up transcription models, requiring tuning, provider selection, and sometimes even custom solutions.

- Generating speech isn’t just about good voices—numbers, jargon, and SSML usage remain pain points. Ilan notes that languages like Hebrew lack high-quality TTS, and fine-tuning output to sound natural and intelligible is still a manual, nuanced task.

- AudioCodes’ LiveHub platform enables teams to deploy a voice bot in minutes—connecting phone numbers, conversational AI platforms, STT/TTS providers (like Deepgram), and telephony systems, all from a single UI. It supports full orchestration, escalations, and integration with channels like Teams and WhatsApp.

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Connect with Ilan Avner:
https://voiceaiconnect.audiocodes.com/
https://www.audiocodes.com/solutions-products/saas/audiocodes-live-hub

Connect with Demetrios:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/

Connect with Deepgram:
https://deepgram.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram
https://twitter.com/deepgramai
https://www.facebook.com/deepgram/

Join the Deepgram Discord Server!
https://discord.com/invite/xWRaCDBtW4

Eliott Hoffenberg, Co-Founder & CEO at Vocca. Vocca helps medical clinics run 24/7 by automating their phone reception with AI.

It handles scheduling, triage, follow-ups, and patient prep through smart inbound and outbound calls. Thousands of providers use Vocca to reduce costs, save time, and deliver instant service—without the wait. 

Episode Highlights:
- Eliott explains how his company builds AI voice agents to automate inbound and outbound calls for clinics—handling scheduling, prep instructions, follow-ups, and more. Voice is still the dominant channel in healthcare, and automation addresses staff shortages and inefficiencies.

- Rather than aiming for overly chatty or expressive bots, the team focuses on clear, predictable behavior. Patients trust the agent not because it feels human, but because it’s reliable, accurate, and always available—key in high-stakes healthcare settings.

- Instead of building just a voice layer on top of other systems, Eliott’s team takes a vertical approach—owning everything from telephony to intent classification to EHR integration. This control lets them move faster, ship safer, and serve complex healthcare needs.

- Many patients don’t realize they’re talking to AI. Eliott stresses that determinism + thoughtful design create reliable, familiar-feeling conversations. Sometimes, less AI is better if it improves trust and clarity.

- Eliott sees healthcare as 50% diagnosis, 50% communication. His vision is to build 24/7 AI receptionists that manage everything outside of clinical care—empowering patients and streamlining operations without needing a doctor for every question.

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Connect with Eliott Hoffenberg:
https://vocca.ai/
https://x.com/eliotthoff
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliott-hoffenberg/

Connect with Demetrios:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/

Connect with Deepgram:
https://deepgram.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram
https://twitter.com/deepgramai
https://www.facebook.com/deepgram/

Join the Deepgram Discord Server!
https://discord.com/invite/xWRaCDBtW4

Griffin Christenson, Founder at Gryfn.AI. Gryfn.AI offers AI-powered tools to help educators and parents identify signs of dyslexia in children through a fast, research-backed online screening test. The platform provides detailed insights into reading ability and potential learning difficulties, using speech and language processing to deliver personalized reports and recommendations.

As an optometrist and computer science enthusiast, Griffin Christenson, O.D., is merging clinical insight with tech innovation to reshape how we screen for dyslexia. With a background in biology and a doctorate from Pacific University, he’s developed an AI-powered MVP that digitizes and automates dyslexia risk detection—making early intervention more accessible. Now refining the project through global entrepreneurship training, Griffin’s mission is to fuse vision science with cutting-edge tools to improve care. Outside the clinic, he enjoys time with his wife, dog Lambeau, and cat Oliver.

Episode Highlights:
- Griffin shares his journey from becoming an optometrist to pursuing a master’s in computer science, driven by a fascination with AI sparked during board exam prep.

- Inspired by his father and Dr. John Griffin’s work in dyslexia diagnostics, Griffin digitized a paper-based screening test to identify dyslexia risks efficiently.

- The Gryfn AI screener presents words briefly on-screen for users to pronounce, using speech-to-text tech to assess accuracy and risk.

- Gryfn AI aims to open-source its code to expand access to early screening and partner with schools for automated testing.

- Griffin’s wife is launching Clarify Reading for remote dyslexia therapy, and he’s exploring tech-forward ventures in eye care and wearable devices.

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Connect with Griffin Christenson:
https://gryfn.ai/
https://clarifyreading.com/

Connect with Demetrios:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/

Connect with Deepgram:
https://deepgram.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram
https://twitter.com/deepgramai
https://www.facebook.com/deepgram/

Join the Deepgram Discord Server!
https://discord.com/invite/xWRaCDBtW4

Anurag Kejriwal, Founder at Sonnet AI. Sonnet AI, an advanced AI-powered meeting assistant & notetaker designed to keep conversations in context—helping professionals extract meaningful insights and manage relationships effortlessly in their specific domain– with custom text and visual notes. As a Computer Science & Engineering student at Ohio State University, Anurag is building an AI platform that goes beyond traditional note-taking, offering a domain-expert, no-bot-needed assistant that understands context and structure. Unlike other AI meeting tools, Sonnet AI doesn’t just capture words—it provides speaker insights, smart summaries, and an inbuilt relationship tracker, ensuring every conversation remains in context. With features like participant reports and conversation matching, Sonnet helps users keep track of critical discussions across teams, clients, and leads—all in one place.

Episode Highlights:
- Anurag shares his early entrepreneurial experiments—including dropshipping and cold-emailing Instagram theme pages—before eventually diving into the startup world with Sonnet AI while juggling college, a part-time internship, and classes as a CS and math major at Ohio State.

- Originally a sales-focused tool created by other co-founders, Anurag stepped in to reimagine the product with a focus on audio, relationship context, and founder productivity—leading to a new direction targeting startups and legal teams.

- Sonnet AI goes beyond simple meeting summaries by building a relationship tracker—a personalized CRM-like experience that tracks conversations across time and offers context-aware notes, adapting dynamically based on prior interactions.

- Templates, visual notes (like tables, concept maps, timelines), and “no-bot” audio capture are standout features—many of which were shaped by direct user feedback. One standout: users discovering creative ways to use the customizable templates Anurag hadn’t even imagined.

- From audio processing challenges to platform-specific constraints (like no Windows version yet), Anurag dives into technical hurdles and how AI coding assistants have become invaluable for a lean founder-led dev team—despite mixed reactions from academia on their use.

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Connect with Anurag Kejriwal:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuragkejriwal1/
https://www.sonnetai.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sonnetai

Connect with Demetrios:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/

Connect with Deepgram:
https://deepgram.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepgram
https://twitter.com/deepgramai
https://www.facebook.com/deepgram/

Join the Deepgram Discord Server!
https://discord.com/invite/xWRaCDBtW4