This is a bit off topic, but are you guys familiar with coral.AI boards?
They have a microcontroller board with TPU that I reckon should be able to run larger neural models (of course there's the problem of ADC/DAC that is already solved with the seed)
The daisy seed is certainly capable. I'm not sure if you'll find a standalone IR loader, but there are projects that include IR cab sim (eg funbox mars)