Beside, an AI voice startup that emerged from stealth earlier this month has raised $32 million to expand its \u2018AI receptionist,\u2019 which is already handling millions of calls per month.<\/p>\n
The startup\u2019s AI receptionist aims to fill the gap for people and small businesses who can\u2019t afford a full-time assistant. It answers calls, remembers customer details, books appointments, and handles follow-ups, all through an app that connects directly to a customer\u2019s existing phone number.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think of it like hiring a Harvard-grad Chief of Staff with a perfect memory,\u201d Maxime Germain, Beside\u2019s Paris-based founder and CEO, told Fortune. \u201cOver time, it becomes a trusted partner who understands your customers, owns the follow-through, and helps you win more business.\u201d<\/p>\n
The AI voice startup, which operates in the U.S., recently closed a $20 million Series A led by EQT<\/a> Ventures, with participation from Index Ventures, and angels including Slack founder Stewart Butterfield. The funding follows a $10.5 million Seed round led by Index and $1.4 million in extra SAFE. Beside plans to use the funding for product development, hiring, and eventually expanding into European markets.<\/p>\n Kaushik Subramanian, partner at EQT Ventures, said: \u201cBeside isn\u2019t just optimizing communications between businesses and customers, it\u2019s completely rethinking how work gets done.\u201d<\/p>\n The company has spent 18 months in stealth under the name M1, reaching $4 million in annual recurring revenue with more than 20,000 paying customers, half of whom open the app 14 times a day, six days a week.<\/p>\n A consumer focus<\/p>\n Instead of targeting large enterprises, Beside is going directly to consumers, something that Germain says sets the company apart in the crowded AI voice tech space. The founding team comes from consumer technology companies such as X<\/a>, Snap<\/a>, and Jour, a mental health app Germain<\/a> sold to digital health insurer Alan in 2021.<\/p>\n The voice AI market is crowded, primarily due to the potential for the tech to automate a significant proportion of customer service work. The sector is expected to grow as a market from $3.14 billion in 2024 to $47.5 billion by 2034.<\/a><\/p>\n Specialized startups like ElevenLabs and Vapi are already competing against tech giants, including Amazon<\/a> and Microsoft<\/a>, to build realistic voice AI systems that can handle routine customer questions and appointment scheduling without human agents. While many businesses already use chatbots for written communications, voice AI that can hold natural conversations opens the door to automating a much wider range of customer interactions.<\/p>\n Germain said the company is differentiating itself from others in the space by focusing on getting straight to the 100 million Americans whose jobs happen over the phone, such as contractors, real estate agents, hairdressers, dispatchers, and small business owners who can\u2019t afford a full-time assistant and are missing out on business because of this. In the U.K., most small businesses answer fewer than 40%<\/a> of their incoming calls, and four out of five callers who get sent to voicemail never call back.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWe have lawyers, we have doctors, we also have priests and churches using the product. It\u2019s made for any industry, but aimed at the same person or the same mindset in each of these industries\u2026if you really care about your customer and want to offer a much higher experience, the detail of this conversation is going to be so important for you,\u201d Germain said.<\/p>\n AI that answers your phone<\/p>\n