US startup accelerator Y Combinator has doubled down on a College of Melbourne spin out in a $22 million (US$16m) Collection A.
The spherical for Phonely was led by Base10 Companions, supported by YC, in addition to three of the startup’s enterprise clients Etech International Companies, buyer expertise platform TSA Group, and Have interaction CX, and others.
YC backed the AI-based digital receptionist startup with a $750,000 raise in mid-2024.
The brand new capital values the enterprise at US$100m (A$139m). The startup’s raised greater than A$26m.
Phonely was based in 2023 by PhD AI researcher Will Bodewes and Nisal Ranasinghe, and spun out of the college’s AI Analysis Lab to launch in early 2024. They’ve since primarily based the enterprise in San Francisco.
Bodewes describes it as just like the the voice assistant from ‘Iron Man’, however for enterprise.
Phonely makes use of an organization’s web site to create an AI receptionist that solutions FAQs, routes calls, and books appointments, and could be arrange in simply 5 minutes.
Phonely now handles hundreds of thousands of calls per 30 days throughout 1000’s of companies. It’s additionally a number one AI job destroyer, with one buyer changing 350 human brokers in a month with the platform.
Xander van der Westhuizen, head of AI knowledge and innovation at shopper and investor TSA Group stated they’ve 4,500 human brokers.
“We didn’t consider AI may match that degree of conversational high quality at scale,” he stated.
“Working with the Phonely staff, we’ve been capable of create AI brokers that resolve calls higher than our greatest individuals.”
Fellow investor and buyer Have interaction CX had greater than $14 million in insurance coverage coverage gross sales through Phonely within the first 4 months of 2026.
