telli raises $15M for AI agents that automate customer operations

Berlin-based AI startup telli has raised $15 million in a seed round announced July 23, 2026, bringing its total funding to $18.5 million. The company builds an AI platform that enables B2C companies to deploy and manage AI agents across customer-facing operations — voice calls, chat, SMS, WhatsApp, and email — through a single system .

Who invested and why it matters

The round was led by Swiss venture firm redalpine, with participation from Cherry Ventures, Y Combinator, Mutschler Ventures AG, and several angel investors: Whirlpool CEO Marc Bitzer, Adyen's Alexa von Bismarck, former Flixbus/Lufthansa director Martin Koehler, and Paragon Partners' Krischan von Moeller . The presence of operators from global consumer brands and payments infrastructure signals the round's strategic focus on enterprises that manage high-volume customer communication.

telli had previously raised a $3.6 million pre-seed round in April 2025. The company is a Y Combinator graduate .

Founders and founding year

telli was founded in 2024 by Seb Hapte-Selassie, Philipp Baumanns, and Finn zur Mühlen . The three founders built telli to address a problem they observed across B2C companies: customer operations remain heavily manual, fragmented across channels, and difficult to scale with existing contact-center infrastructure .

The platform and AI coworker "Charlie"

telli's core product is an AI agent platform that lets companies build, deploy, and manage AI agents that automate customer-facing operations end-to-end . At the center of the platform is Charlie, an AI assistant that the company calls an "AI coworker" for customer operations teams.

Charlie is accessible on every page of the telli app via Cmd+J (Ctrl+J on Windows) or by clicking "Ask Charlie" in the header . Its capabilities include:

• Building and refining agents — Users describe what they want in plain language; Charlie drafts prompt edits, adjusts call behavior, sets up outcomes, and connects tools, calendars, and knowledge bases. Edits appear as inline diffs that users accept or reject .
• Creating workflows — Charlie builds and edits automated workflows from chat, adding triggers, conditions, and action blocks — for example, "Send WhatsApp appointment confirmation after an answered call" .
• Analyzing calls and performance — Charlie searches past calls by date, outcome, or transcript content, pulls transcripts into chat, and summarizes account-wide results .
• Platform navigation — Users can ask Charlie where to find specific settings, and it links directly to the correct page .
• Multi-platform presence — Charlie is available within the telli app, on Slack (by mentioning Charlie in a channel), on Microsoft Teams, and through an MCP server for connecting tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor .

A key design principle: Charlie never publishes changes without human approval. Every agent or workflow edit remains a draft until a user reviews and publishes it .

Communication channels and use cases

telli's AI agents operate across voice calls, chat, SMS, WhatsApp, and email, all managed from a single interface . The platform addresses a broad range of customer-facing tasks :

• Lead qualification and lead reactivation
• Customer support and customer engagement
• Appointment booking and scheduling
• Payment reminders and payment collection
• Upselling and proactive care
• AI receptionist and service visit management
• Data collection

At scale, telli's agents process millions of conversations for companies including Sky, Enpal, Vaillant, Zenjob, Bark, Engel & Völkers, and McMakler .

How the funding will be used

The $15 million will go toward scaling telli's engineering, go-to-market, and customer operations teams and further developing Charlie and the platform . At the time of the announcement, the company had more than 15 open roles across these functions . telli aims to compete directly with incumbent telephony and contact-center providers by offering a purpose-built AI-first alternative .