Today, I'm thrilled to announce Flai's $27M Series A, led by Base10, bringing our total funding to $33M This round also brings in some of the biggest names in automotive. With Toyota Ventures, Friedkin, and Findlay Automotive Group on board, we're now backed by the people who build, distribute, service, and sell cars. A year ago, we announced our seed round with one product: an AI that answers the phone for car dealerships. Today, Flai is the first AI-native CRM for automotive, built for both the sales floor and the service drive. Over the last year, @useflai has grown more than 20x, and we now work with over 20% of the top 50 dealer groups. Dealerships still run on software from another era. One of the industry's biggest vendors started before the car was even invented. Dealer teams are buried in disconnected tools, and their customers feel every gap. Flai changes that. On average, Flai generates ~$100K in additional monthly revenue for each dealership we work with. With this funding, we'll invest aggressively in product and engineering to build the system modern dealerships run on. I'm incredibly proud of our team and deeply grateful to our dealer partners for their trust in what we're building. The round was led by @Base10Partners, with participation from: @firstround @Toyota_Ventures @friedkingroup @ycombinator Findlay Automotive Group We're growing extremely fast and hiring across every team: engineering, product, marketing, sales, and customer success. If you want to help rebuild how cars are sold and serviced, check out our careers page or reach out to me directly!

Makes total sense but TIL that if you don’t allow IP tracking Starlink on a plane doesn’t work at all

it’s really crazy how much progress you can make over time if you just focus on doing a little bit of progress every day

Introducing Magnitude. It's a coding agent that runs entirely on open models. It costs 60% less than Claude Code with no drop in performance. Try it now: npm i -g @magnitudedev/cli Here's how it works 👇

There are 7 days left until we close applications for our next cohort. Some of the people you’ll be meeting: @pedroh96, founder of @brex @viccpoes, founder of @krea_ai @fernandorojo, head of @v0 Rodrigo Schmidt, first Brazilian at Meta @eliast, founder @agency @saradu, founder @andocorporation @victorcardenas, founder of @slashapp Andres Perez, founder Sanas. @APolakof, founder @useflai @RohanVasishth, founder of @getbluejay_ai @zacbakerr, founder @tryterac @abustamante, founder @bem_hq @Andydy42, founder @RespanAI @cvander, founder @platzi @pablorpalafox, founder @happyrobot If you’re in doubt, apply! The thing you’ll quickly realize in SF is that everyone is just like you, so please don’t underestimate yourself.

Just have to pick and win the right battles

Why Most Service Departments Leak Calls – And What Actually Stops It | Pre-NADA AI #5 Stream the full episode now, hosted by @samdarc: 02:27 What are Kissee Ford's operational challenges? 08:45 How can AI solve service call problems? 14:46 What is "The Flai Solution"? 20:45 What were the early AI successes? 21:53 How were vendor issues solved? 23:57 How did "Amanda" impact operations? 26:00 How was AI integrated at the dealership? 32:03 What are future AI plans?

Yesterday night at the @ycombinator F25 fundraising talk :)

We work every day all day for messages like this one 🥹

Flai in Times Square 🦅

Saturday with the Flai guys

There’s something very exciting about trying to solve what seems impossible at first

Congrats to @useflai on their $4.5M seed round! Flai helps automotive dealerships bring in more customers by handling all communication before they walk in the door — across calls, text, and email. techcrunch.com/2025/10/03/fl…

Congratulations to Flai on the seed round led by First Round Capital! The visited over 400 car dealerships in person to get Flai off the ground.

We are excited to partner with @APolakof and the Flai team! We were very impressed by the team's deep background in voice AI and their increasing momentum with customers, and excited to be supporting them with our friends at First Round Capital Liquid 2 Ventures.

So excited to share about my most recent investment!! The technical depth + willingness to put in the unglamorous work that @APolakof, @alen0vich & @_juan_alzugaray have is a key attribute I look for in founders. In just a few months, the amount of product built and customer traction was crazy impressive. But most of all, I loved how these 3 engineers (ex-Uber, Netflix & HappyRobot) visited 450+ car dealerships in person.  Since then they’ve generated millions in revenue for customers, with one customer saying Flai’s voice AI solution paid for itself on a single Sunday. Super proud to lead Flai’s $4.5M Seed round @firstround. Love working with this team — three of the most competitive founders I’ve ever met. Article on @techcrunch 👇

Today we’re excited to share that @useflai has raised a $4.5 million seed round led by @firstround with participation from @ycombinator @svangel , @Liquid2V, and many other terrific funds and angel investors. This funding fuels our mission to bring customers to automotive dealerships by handling all communication before they walk in the door. 
After visiting hundreds of dealerships and speaking with service advisors, BDC managers, GSMs, and GMs across the US, the pattern was clear: missed calls, full inboxes, long hold times, and customers who don’t try again. In fact, 70% of people who hit voicemail call a competitor within 30 minutes, translating directly into lost revenue for the dealership.

Flai has already handled tens of thousands of customer calls and is live in dozens of dealerships. Some dealers have told us Flai has paid for itself on a single Sunday and we’ve generated millions in revenue in the last two months. For our biggest location, we’re generating about 150k in revenue each month. 
With this funding, we’re pushing the product to new levels to build the AI communications platform for auto dealerships where every customer interaction outside of the store is taken care of.

Happy Ari :p