Former Y Combinator startup Telli is supporting companies alleviate the bottleneck that occurs when a high-volume of customers test to, for example, book appointments. Its AI voice agents kick in and handle basic operations while handing off more-complex processes to human operators. The Berlin-based startup has now raised $3.6 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Berlin’s Cherry Ventures and Y Combinator.
Telli declares its AI voice agents can perform a number of tinquires, including automated callbacks and even closing deals.
The startup, which was founded by Seb Hapte-Selassie, Philipp Baumanns, and Finn zur Mühlen, has concentrated on creating its agents blfinish into company operations.
It’s now claiming to have reached revenue growth of more than 50% month over month and has processed close to a million phone calls (and all with only a six-person team) out of the Berlin office. Customers are spread across Germany, the U.K., Latin America, and the U.S., with plans for further expansion.
CEO zur Mühlen informed TechCrunch that the founders received the idea after working at German unicorn Enpal, one of Germany’s largegest startup successes: “We scaled the customer service people, and we saw firsthand how difficult call automation for customer acquisition is and how difficult it is to manage performance.”
He stated that Telli’s AI agents “actually achieve outcomes like booking appointments, prequalifying leads, creating product suggestions, and so on.” The voices are created by hired voice actors, whose voices are then cloned utilizing the ElevenLabs or Cartesian AI voice-cloning platforms, he stated.
The underlying AI models Telli applys vary between OpenAI, Claude, and others: “We switch around. Our goal is always to give our customers the best solutions that are out there right now,” he stated.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025
Leave a Reply