911 centers are so understaffed, they’re turning to AI to answer calls

When Max Keenan was with Y Combinator’s batch of Y Combinator in 2022, he was working AurelianA company that automated appointments for hair salons. But less than a year later, a conversation with one of his customers led him to a much more important problem.

The carpool line of a nearby school constantly blocked the parking lot of one of the Aurelian customer salon. The salon owner called the non-emergency line of the city and was put on hold for 45 minutes before reaching a dispatcher. “She then called me in her office and said:” Max, do you want to help me? “”, Keenan told WAN.

When he started to investigate how municipal non-emergency centers work, he discovered that they are often handled by the same people who answer actual 911 emergency situations.

Aurelian turned to the construction of an AI-Vembing assistant that helps 911 call centers to load non-invariably volume volume. The company announced on Wednesday that it collected a Serie A of $ 14 million under the leadership of NEA.

The AI ​​Voice agent of the company is designed to trium-offs such as sound complaints, parking violations and even stolen wallet reports that do not need an immediate response from a officer or can be treated without sending staff to the scene.

Ai’s AI is trained to recognize a real emergency situation and immediately transfer those calls to a human dispatcher, Keenan said. In other situations, the system collects important information and prepares a report for or passes on the details directly to the police for follow -up actions.

Since the launch of his AI assistant in May 2024, Aurelian has been deployed in more than a dozen 911 shipping centers, including that of Snohomish County, Washington; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Emergency call centers mainly assume, largely because they are consistently understaffed-a direct consequence of sending a high-pressure work that belongs to the top 10 industries with the Highest sales percentages. Need Dispatchers are often asked to work overtime, with reports from 12 to 16-hour working days in Certain provinces.

“The reason why we are the most focused on 911 is because it is the industry that has this pain the most acute,” said Keenan. “We think these telecommunicators should have the chance to take a break or go to the bathroom.”

Mustafa Neigheuchwala, a partner at Nea, said: “One of the things that surprise me, you don’t replace an existing person; you replace a person they wanted to hire, but couldn’t.”

Aurelian is not the only AI startup that tackles non-invoicing calls. Hyper, who picked up a $ 6.3 million seed round, came from Stealth last month. Prepared, a company founded in 2019, has also recently added an AI speech solution for emergency aid.

But Aurelian believes that his product is running ahead. According to Tnekeuchwala, Aurelian is the only company that has actually used and treated live calls. “As far as we know, no one else is actually live,” he said, referring to Aurelian who responds to thousands of actual phone calls every day.