telli raises $15M seed for AI customer-ops agents, led by redalpine
What's the deal? Berlin-based telliDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has raised a $15 million seed round led by redalpine, with Cherry Ventures, Y Combinator, and Mutschler also participating. The startup, founded in 2024, builds AI agents that handle voice, WhatsApp, chat, and email conversations for B2C companies.
By the numbers: The round brings telli's total funding to $18.5 million, following a $3.6 million pre-seed round 15 months earlier. The company says revenue grew nine times year-over-year for clients including SkyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Enpal, though it has not disclosed starting figures.
What's the endgame? telli's agents handle first-touch, repetitive calls during peak hours, backed by an AI coworker called Charlie that reviews calls and improves performance over time. Co-founder Finn zur Mühlen frames it as AI and humans working together, not one replacing the other.
What's the context? Two of the three founders scaled Enpal's heat pump sales team from two to 150 people in about a year. That customer is now also a proving ground: Enpal's team chats with Charlie daily to refine its agents.
Why now? zur Mühlen says customer referrals, expansion inside existing accounts, and a Y Combinator batch justified the raise. redalpine, which has backed N26, Proxima Fusion, and 9fin, led despite telli operating in a crowded field against incumbents like Talkdesk, Aircall, Genesys, and Five9.
“We are not a research company. We just want to give the best solution to the customer possible, and it doesn't matter for us what model is underneath,” zur Mühlen says. The agents run on a cascading pipeline of transcription, language model, and voice generation.
The signal: telli's $15 million ranks in the 99th percentile of German seed rounds in its bucket, a sign that investors are placing outsized bets on AI agents built to run customer operations rather than the models beneath them.
Read more: Tech Funding News
