Alexa, meet Vapi – after Amazon Ring chose this up-and-coming AI voice vendor to handle its calls, the startup soared in value. Now, it routes all of Ring’s inbound phone traffic, boosting customer satisfaction and proving that natural-sounding AI agents are here to stay.

In mid-Q4 last year, Ring was exploring options for scaling their call center or going automated with traditional systems. Vapi offered engineers granular control over the AI's response – a feature that Ring valued highly. The result? Better customer service without the need for constant human intervention.

Founded by University of Waterloo alumni Jordan Dearsley and Nikhil Gupta, Vapi emerged from an AI therapy project into a platform designed to build, deploy and manage voice agents in various business scenarios such as support, lead qualification and sales. With over 1 billion calls processed so far, the startup boasts significant traction among enterprise clients like Kavak and Intuit.

Vapi's success is part of a broader trend in AI voice technology, where companies aim to automate customer interactions with minimal human oversight. But Dearsley differentiates Vapi by focusing on infrastructure and orchestration, giving enterprises more control over reliability and compliance.