Flai is the latest startup bringing AI to car dealerships

Flai, a Y Combinator-backed startup, raised $4.5 million in seed funding to bring AI-powered voice agents and text handling to car dealerships. Founded by former HappyRobot engineers and a Netflix data scientist, the company built custom software from scratch rather than using off-the-shelf solutions. The founding team visited around 400 dealerships in person during their early phase to train their AI and acquire customers, addressing the common problem of dealerships losing potential customers due to tied-up phone lines. Flai competes in a growing market that includes other startups like Toma, which recently raised $17 million.