telli secures $15M seed to automate customer-facing operations

Berlin-based AI startup telli has raised $15 million in a seed funding round to expand its AI platform for customer-facing operations. The round was led by redalpine, with participation from Mutschler, Cherry Ventures, Y Combinator and several angel investors, bringing the company's total funding to more than $18.5 million.

Founded in 2024 by Seb Hapte-Selassie, Philipp Baumanns and Finn zur Muehlen, telli develops AI agents that help B2C companies automate customer-facing operations across voice, chat, SMS, WhatsApp and email. Its platform enables businesses to deploy AI agents, manage customer conversations, analyse interactions and automate workflows across sales, service and support functions. At the core of the platform is Charlie, an AI coworker designed to help customer operations teams build and optimise AI agents, connect internal systems, analyse conversations, identify operational issues and improve customer communications.

The company is addressing a shift in how consumers interact with businesses as AI assistants increasingly handle tasks such as customer support, appointment booking, contract management and product comparisons. As communication expands across multiple channels and AI agents become more widely adopted, businesses face growing operational complexity in delivering consistent customer experiences while maintaining efficient operations. telli says its AI agents already handle millions of customer conversations for businesses ranging from SMEs to large enterprises, by answering customer enquiries, qualifying leads, booking appointments and resolving service requests.

Customer-facing operations are becoming too complex to run with the current tools alone. The next generation of consumer companies will need AI that can talk to customers, work across channels, and help teams improve the operation behind every interaction. That's what we're building with telli, said Finn zur Muehlen, co-founder and CEO of telli.

The funding will be used to expan