Flip, a NYC-based, developer of a voice-based customer service technology designed to automate phone calls and create an improved customer experience.
Flip was funded $20 million led by Next Coast Ventures and Ridge Ventures with participation from Data Point Capital, ScOp Venture Capital, Bullpen Capital, Forum Ventures and a group of angel investors.
The investment is intended to accelerate the company’s “verticalized” approach to AI-based customer service—a strategy that prioritizes deep industry specialization over the “one-size-fits-all” models that have dominated the recent generative AI gold rush.
Flip’s core thesis is that horizontal, industry-agnostic platforms often fail because they require businesses to spend months—or even years—building custom integrations and training data from scratch. In contrast, Flip’s “vertical AI” comes pre-loaded with hundreds of integrations and proven workflows tailored to specific sectors: retail/e-commerce, healthcare, and transportation.
“While horizontal platforms require custom-building every experience, vertical players like Flip come ready ‘out-of-the-box’ with everything brands in that industry need built-in,” Schiff explained. For a retail brand, this means the AI already knows how to handle “Where is my order?” (WISMO) requests, process returns, or manage exchanges without a human developer needing to map out every edge case.
For many consumers, “automated customer service” is synonymous with frustrating phone menus and chatbots that don’t understand context. Flip is aiming to change that perception by offering what it calls an “Amazon Alexa-like” voice experience for businesses. The system is designed to answer calls instantly, recognize intent naturally, and resolve complex issues end-to-end by connecting directly to the same back-end systems (like Kustomer, Shopify, or Zendesk) that human agents use.
The investment reflects a broader trend among venture capitalists who are becoming more discerning about AI applications. Investors are looking for companies that own a specific “moat”—in Flip’s case, that moat is proprietary data from 300 million calls and deep domain expertise.
With the new $20 million in capital, Flip plans to significantly expand its engineering and go-to-market teams across its offices in New York, Los Angeles, and the United Kingdom. The company is also looking to deepen its reach into healthcare, a vertical where privacy compliance and technical complexity have historically slowed AI adoption.
As Gartner predicts that 70% of customer service journeys will begin with conversational AI by 2028, Flip is betting that the winners won’t be the biggest models, but the smartest ones—those that truly speak the language of the business they serve.
By: K. Tagura
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