Car dealerships in the U.S. may soon get a major AI-powered upgrade. Flai, a startup building artificial intelligence software for dealerships, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding to expand its platform that streamlines customer communications.
Founded last year by Ari and Alen Polakof, both early engineers at HappyRobot, and former Netflix data scientist Juan Alzugaray, Flai emerged from Y Combinator with a mission to modernize dealership interactions. The startup’s “omni-channel” system integrates AI voice agents, email, and SMS to help dealerships respond faster and more effectively to customer inquiries.
The new funding round was led by Liz Wessel at First Round Capital and included backing from YC, RedBlue Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures (founded by Joe Montana), and Innovation Endeavors.
Flai isn’t alone in this space. Rival startup Toma raised $17 million earlier this year from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Yossi Levi, better known as Car Dealership Guy. Legacy voice-response providers are also racing to adapt.
What sets Flai apart, CEO Ari Polakof said, is that the company has built its AI stack from scratch instead of relying on off-the-shelf voice technology. That has helped Flai’s voice agents impress enough dealerships to lure them away from competitors.
The founders also took a hands-on approach to customer acquisition, traveling to more than 400 dealerships in their first year. “It’s almost very tiring, painful, but I think it’s the only way,” Polakof said. Early on, he even worked out of service bays and back offices to better understand dealerships’ needs.
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The seed round will allow Flai to continue scaling without ballooning its headcount. “We don’t want to have 100, 200 people working on this right now,” Polakof said. Instead, the three-person founding team plans to stay lean and focus on high-impact growth.
With thousands of dealerships across the U.S. struggling to manage calls and inquiries, Flai sees a massive opportunity. And with fresh funding, the startup is betting it can reshape how car buyers and service customers connect with dealerships.
