Phonely, an AI voice agent startup spun out of the University of Melbourne, has raised a US$16 million (about A$22 million) Series A led by Base10 Partners, with three of its own enterprise customers investing in the round, the company announced in April 2026.
Customers backing a supplier with their own money is uncommon in software, and it comes as the market for AI receptionists grows more crowded. The round was reported at a valuation of more than US$100 million and took Phonely’s total funding to about US$19 million, according to Startup Researcher, less than two years after a $750,000 cheque from Y Combinator.
What it does
Phonely builds AI agents that answer business phone lines. They answer common questions, book appointments and route calls in a natural-sounding voice, and the company says an agent can be set up in under five minutes from a business’s website. Each client gets a custom model tuned to its industry’s terms and goals.
The company says it now handles millions of calls a month across thousands of businesses. One unnamed customer reportedly replaced 350 human agents in a month. Another, Engage CX, generated more than $10 million in insurance policy sales through Phonely in four months, Startup Researcher reported.
The raise
Y Combinator returned for the Series A alongside Base10. The three customers that invested were Etech Global Services, TSA Group and Engage CX, each putting money in alongside their commercial contracts.
Phonely plans to use the funds to hire across engineering, sales and marketing and to scale its infrastructure. Its stated goal is to handle one billion calls a year by 2027.
The founders
Phonely was founded in 2023 by Will Bodewes, a PhD AI researcher, and Nisal Ranasinghe. It spun out of an AI research group at the University of Melbourne, launched in early 2024 and is now headquartered in San Francisco.
Jack’s take
The AI receptionist category is getting crowded globally, and plenty of companies will claim similar call numbers. When customers back a vendor with their own money, that is a stronger signal than most metrics on a pitch deck.