Y Combinator-Backed telli Raises $3.6M for AI Call Platform
Finn, Philipp, and Seb - the founders of telli - © Beto Ruiz Alonso
The AI call operations startup telli has announced a $3.6 million pre-seed funding round led by Cherry Ventures and Y Combinator. According to the company's press release, telli has already processed nearly one million calls since its November launch.
Founded just eight months ago by Sebastianos Hapte-Selassie, Finn zur Mühlen, and Philipp Baumanns, telli's platform enables businesses to deploy AI voice agents that collaborate with human teams across the customer journey. The founding team brings unique expertise to the challenge: Finn and Philipp were among the first employees at German energy unicorn Enpal's heat pump division, while Seb studied computer science at Stanford and worked as an early engineer at Pitch.
"We designed the product around achieving outcomes," the founders stated in their announcement. Rather than focusing solely on speech generation technology, telli prioritizes operational integration—making voice AI work reliably for thousands of daily calls.
The platform offers personalized conversations with appropriate tones and accents, end-to-end automation with stateful agents that recognize callbacks, improved customer reachability through smart calling strategies, and real-time human-AI handoffs for quality control.
This approach has resonated strongly with the market. The company reports over 50% month-over-month revenue growth in each of the last three months, primarily through inbound channels and referrals. They've seen strong demand across multiple sectors including real estate, energy, healthcare, and financial services.
The funding will help telli continue building what they describe as "the AI call automation platform where humans and AI work hand in hand." The company is currently hiring across engineering, product, and commercial roles as they scale their operations.
