Amazon Ring, facing a surge in customer-support calls during last year’s holiday season, evaluated more than 40 AI voice vendors before choosing startup Vapi to handle its inbound phone traffic. Today, Ring routes 100% of its inbound calls through Vapi’s platform.
That deployment helped Vapi raise a $50 million Series B led by Peak XV Partners at a valuation of around $500 million after investment, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ring turned to Vapi in mid-Q4 last year, when it was weighing whether to expand call-center capacity, rely more heavily on traditional automated phone systems, or deploy AI agents that could respond more naturally to customers, Vapi Chief Executive Jordan Dearsley (pictured above, left) told TechCrunch. Dearsley believes Ring chose Vapi because if offered Ring engineers granular control over how the AI agents behaved in live customer interactions.
Jason Mitura, vice president of software development at Amazon Ring, said Ring’s customer satisfaction scores improved after deploying Vapi’s platform and that the company’s teams were able to tune the AI agent experience without depending on engineering. “A lot of AI tools promise great outcomes — Vapi has delivered on them,” he said.
Founded by Dearsley and his University of Waterloo classmate Nikhil Gupta (pictured above, right), Vapi grew out of an AI therapist Dearsley built in 2023 for conversations during his daily walks. The pair, who had gone through Y Combinator with productivity startup Superpowered, found that while few people wanted the therapy product itself, startups were increasingly interested in the low-latency voice infrastructure underneath it. This led them to pivot to Vapi and launch the platform publicly in 2024.
Vapi provides tools for companies to build, deploy, and manage voice agents across customer support, lead qualification, appointment scheduling, and outbound sales.
Image Credits:Vapi
The startup says it has now handled more than 1 billion calls through its platform, with usage accelerating as enterprises move more customer interactions onto AI systems. Vapi, Dearsley said, currently processes between 1 million and 5 million calls a day, with enterprise customers accounting for the bulk of that volume.
In addition to Amazon Ring, Vapi’s enterprise customers include Kavak, Instawork, New York Life, UnityAI, Cherry, and Intuit. The startup also operates a self-serve developer platform that has been used by more than 1 million developers.
“Because we started from self-serve and had such a wide developer footprint, we were already battle-tested at significant scale before we signed our first major enterprise customer,” Dearsley said.
Other investors participating in the Series B round included Microsoft’s M12, Kleiner Perkins, and Bessemer Venture Partners, bringing Vapi’s total funding to $72 million. The startup is currently at an annual recurring revenue run rate in the “healthy” eight figures, an investor source told TechCrunch.
Vapi is part of a growing wave of AI voice startups that includes Sierra, Decagon, PolyAI, Bland, Retell, and ElevenLabs, as companies race to build systems capable of handling customer conversations with minimal human involvement. Dearsley said Vapi differentiates itself by focusing less on pre-packaged applications and more on the infrastructure and orchestration layer behind voice agents, particularly for enterprises that want greater control over reliability, compliance, and model behavior.
The startup currently has around 100 employees and plans to use the new funding to expand its engineering, infrastructure, and go-to-market teams.
“The golden problem is taking this indeterminate beast that is a model and taming it,” Dearsley said. “If you can do that, then you can provide value to the world.”
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The All Progressives Congress, APC, governorship candidate in Nasarawa State, Senator Ahmed Aliyu Wadada, has announced Chief Michael Emmanuel Ombugadu as his running mate for the 2027 election.
Wadada made the announcement in a statement issued on Monday, describing Ombugadu’s selection as an effort to strengthen the party’s ticket ahead of the election.
He said Ombugadu brings more than three decades of experience spanning administration, public finance, community service, academia and the private sector.
Wadada said his running mate began his professional career at Ashaka Cement Plc before serving at Isa Mustapha Agwai I Polytechnic, Lafia, and later at the Nasarawa State Pension Bureau, where he rose to become Director of Finance and Accounts.
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According to Wadada, Ombugadu’s career has been marked by diligence, accountability and public service.
He also described him as a grassroots politician whose political career has been shaped by resilience, loyalty and commitment to his constituents.
Wadada said Ombugadu’s decision to prioritise the interest of the APC and the collective interest of the state over personal ambition during recent political developments demonstrated the qualities he brings to the ticket.
“Beyond the positions he has held, I value the man: his humility, his loyalty, his understanding of our people and his commitment to service,” Wadada said.
He said the joint ticket reflects the diversity of Nasarawa State and the interests of its people across the 13 Local Government Areas, 18 Development Areas and 147 electoral wards.
Wadada reiterated his campaign theme, “One Nasarawa. One People. One Future,” and pledged to run an issue-based campaign focused on unity and development.
“We will run a campaign that unites rather than divides; that focuses on issues rather than sentiments; and that places the development, security, prosperity and dignity of the people of Nasarawa State above every other consideration,” he said.
Wadada congratulated Ombugadu on his selection and expressed confidence in the APC ticket ahead of the 2027 governorship election.
Alfred Dapal Damiyal (ADD) has been affirmed as the Governorship Candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) for Plateau State ahead of the 2027 governorship election, with Mwadkon Dung Vincent nominated as his running mate.
The affirmation took place on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, at the NDC State Secretariat in Jos, where delegates and stakeholders of the party gathered to reaffirm their confidence in Damiyal and his capacity to lead the party into the 2027 governorship contest. The exercise was supervised by officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), providing institutional oversight to the process.
During the gathering, Meadkom Dung Vincent was also nominated to serve as Damiyal’s running mate, giving the NDC a clear governorship ticket ahead of the 2027 election.
The affirmation marks a significant milestone in Damiyal’s political journey and provides the NDC with a clear standard-bearer and running mate as the party begins to intensify its preparations, mobilisation and engagement with voters across Plateau State.
Damiyal’s emergence is anchored on his NEWTHINKING philosophy, which advocates a new approach to governance based on accountability, transparency, equity, inclusion, innovation, human-centred development and good governance.
His campaign maintains that Plateau State is at a crossroads and requires leadership capable of responding to contemporary challenges with contemporary solutions. Damiyal has repeatedly emphasised the need for a fundamental change in the approach to governance, stressing that the state cannot make meaningful progress by relying on outdated methods to address modern problems.
“We cannot continue to apply analogue solutions to digital problems if Plateau is to make meaningful progress. We need a new way of thinking if we desire a new Plateau.”
With extensive professional experience in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector, alongside his background in entrepreneurship and leadership, Damiyal’s supporters believe he brings a combination of professional experience and fresh ideas to the political contest. His proposed agenda places strong emphasis on security, education, economic development, employment, agriculture, infrastructure, youth empowerment, innovation and accountable governance.
The NDC candidate’s campaign also seeks to build a broad-based movement across Plateau’s 17 local government areas, presenting NEWTHINKING as a platform for creating a safer, more united and prosperous state.
For his supporters, the 2027 election represents an opportunity for Plateau voters to make a deliberate choice about the future direction of the state and to demand leadership focused on development, competence and measurable results.
The affirmation by party delegates and stakeholders, under the supervision of INEC officials, on September 15 therefore marks the beginning of a new phase in the NDC’s campaign, with Damiyal and his nominated running mate, Meadkom Dung Vincent, positioned to take the party’s message directly to the people of Plateau State.
The central message of the campaign remains clear: ADD — A New Direction. A New Standard. A New Plateau.