When Max Keenan joined Y Combinator’s summer 2022 batch, he was building Aurelian, a startup that automated appointment bookings for hair salons. But a client’s frustration with a city’s clogged non-emergency hotline inspired a major pivot, and a far bigger mission.
This week, Aurelian announced it has raised a $14 million Series A led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) to scale its AI-powered voice assistant designed for 911 call centers.
The system helps emergency response centers offload non-urgent calls such as noise complaints, parking violations, or stolen wallet reports. Calls that require immediate response are transferred to a human dispatcher, while non-emergency reports are logged and relayed to police departments for follow-up.
Since its launch in May 2024, Aurelian has already been deployed in over a dozen U.S. dispatch centers, including Snohomish County, Washington; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The adoption comes amid chronic dispatcher shortages. Emergency call centers face high turnover rates, with dispatchers often working 12- to 16-hour shifts. Aurelian’s CEO Keenan argues the technology helps relieve that pressure: “We think that these telecommunicators should have a chance of taking a break or go to the bathroom,” he said.
NEA partner Mustafa Neemuchwala noted that Aurelian is not displacing existing jobs but instead filling gaps: “You’re not replacing a human being; you’re replacing a person they wanted to hire but couldn’t.”
Aurelian isn’t alone in tackling the problem. Competitors like Hyper, which recently raised a $6.3 million seed round, and Prepared, founded in 2019, are also offering AI solutions for emergency response. But Aurelian claims to be the only startup currently live and handling thousands of real calls daily.
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With new funding in hand, the company aims to expand its reach and further prove that AI can take on one of the most stressful, and understaffed, jobs in public safety.
