fonio.ai has closed a $17 million seed round at a $140 million valuation, led by 20VC with participation from execs at Hugging Face, Synthesia, HubSpot, and Revolut. This marks one of the largest seed rounds in Austrian startup history.
The Vienna-based company automates customer calls for SMBs using AI, serving more than 7,000 customers across nine markets and processing over two million calls per month, with growth of roughly 40% month on month.
The new capital will support six additional offices and expand services to include voice, WhatsApp, email, and chat. A purpose-built CRM will launch in Q3.
Six months ago, fonio.ai raised €3 million in an angel round in just 11 days, led by its 12-person team in Vienna. Now, the company has secured a $17 million seed round at a $140 million valuation, led by 20VC with support from executives at Hugging Face, Synthesia, HubSpot, and Revolut.
The Austrian startup was founded in autumn 2024 by Daniel Keinrath, who began as an entrepreneur in his teens and sold his influencer marketing company Getnano, which grew to 2,500 customers in four years, in early 2023. Co-founder Matthias Gruber began coding at 14 and became the European Champion in web development.
