telli raises $15M seed to deploy AI agents across customer-facing operations

telli, a Berlin AI startup founded in 2024 by Finn zur Muehlen (CEO), Seb Hapte-Selassie, and Philipp Baumanns, has raised a $15 million / €13.1 million seed led by redalpine. Mutschler Ventures, Y Combinator (where the company went through the accelerator), and Cherry Ventures also participated, along with unnamed strategic investors. Total funding since founding reaches $18.5 million / €16.1 million.

The company builds a multi-channel AI agent platform for B2C customer-facing operations: voice, chat, SMS, WhatsApp, and email handled by AI rather than human agents. Its flagship product, Charlie, is positioned as an AI coworker — an agent designed to manage full customer interactions from initiation through to resolution, across whatever channel the customer uses. Early enterprise customers include Sky, Viessmann, Enpal, and Vaillant.

What telli is building

The standard model for customer operations at scale involves some combination of IVR trees, chatbots that escalate quickly, and human agents whose cost is measured per interaction. Each element creates friction: IVR systems are brittle to intent variation, chatbots handle narrow scripts, and human agents are expensive and don't scale smoothly with demand spikes.

telli's thesis is that the AI required to handle genuine end-to-end customer interactions — ones that vary in complexity, span multiple channels, and require contextual memory — is now buildable. Charlie is the product that embodies that thesis. The platform routes interactions across voice, SMS, WhatsApp, chat, and email, with the same agent context persisting across the channel switch.

"Customer-facing operations are becoming too complex to run with the current tools alone," said Finn zur Muehlen. "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."

The redalpine thesis

redalpine — whose German portfolio includes Cortea among other enterprise AI bets this year — led the round with a clear conviction on the voice agent opportunity in European enterprise. Sebastian Becker, GP at redalpine, stated that "the value voice agents will unlock across enterprise automation is immense, and we strongly believe telli is in pole position to capture the opportunity."

Cherry Ventures as a co-investor reflects a similar thesis: the Berlin firm has consistently backed enterprise software companies that target high-friction operational workflows. Y Combinator backing provides the US commercial reach that matters as telli moves beyond European design partners.

The $15 million funds engineering depth — extending Charlie's capabilities to handle the long tail of complex interactions that currently force escalation to human agents — and the go-to-market team needed to convert the Sky/Viessmann/Enpal/Vaillant design partnerships into contracted revenue at volume. The customer names are from sectors where interaction volume is high and per-interaction cost compounds at scale. Whether Charlie can hold those relationships at full deployment, rather than in controlled pilots, is where the capital's work begins.