AI-powered 9-1-1 call screening startup Hyper exits stealth with $6.3 million USD

Toronto- and San Francisco-based Hyper, co-founded by Canadian repeat entrepreneurs Damian McCabe and Ben Sanders, has emerged from stealth with $6.3 million USD ($8.5 million CAD) in funding for an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled voice solution that claims to screen out non-emergency 9-1-1 calls.

Acting as Hyper’s CEO, Sanders previously co-founded Toronto-based FinTech startup Clearco and digital paperwork platform Proof, which Daylight Automation acquired in 2022.

Hyper said it will use the funding to expand its footprint across the United States.

McCabe, a York University alumni and now Hyper’s chief product officer, worked at Uber, Instagram, and IBM before he founded Toronto-based product development service company Connected. That firm scaled to 200 employees before ThoughtWorks bought it in 2022.

The majority of the Yukon-founded startup’s employees are based in Toronto, with an American presence in San Francisco, a Hyper spokesperson told BetaKit. The company is currently looking for a head of engineering based in either the United States (US) or Canada.

Eniac Ventures led the all-equity funding with participation from fellow American firms GreatPoint Ventures, VSC Ventures, Tusk Venture Partners, K5 Global, Four Acres Capital, TMV, Success Venture Partners, Blue Moon, Alumni Ventures, and Headline.

Canadian venture firms Ripple Ventures and Trillick Ventures also backed the company alongside many angel investors that hail from Canadian companies like Cohere, Clearco, Neo Financial, Float Financial, Taiv, and Top Hat.

Ripple Ventures led Hyper’s very first investment at the pre-seed stage before introducing the company to its latest lead investor Eniac Ventures, Ripple managing partner Matt Cohen wrote in a LinkedIn post.

“It’s been a frenetic journey, closing in under two months, and we’re proud to continue supporting their mission to reduce stress on understaffed 911 centers,” Cohen said.

The Hyper spokesperson said the startup is focused exclusively on calls to non-emergency police lines right now, which are handled by the same 9-1-1 call-takers on a secondary queue. Hyper hopes to reduce the amount of operators tied up on the non-emergency line when a real emergency comes through.

According to Hyper, the AI voice tool listens to callers, responds to them, and asks vital follow-up questions in more than 30 languages. Hyper then uses that information to route callers to the correct agency, or escalate to a human if needed. Hyper claims its system autonomously resolves up to 75 percent of non-emergency calls and can scale to nearly unlimited capacity during surges so that no caller is left waiting.

Sanders told TechCrunch that Hyper trains its models on real 9-1-1 calls with local agencies, and can text links as well as perform non-emergency police reports. He added that it will “always play it safe” by automatically escalating calls outside of its approved scope to a human. The Hyper spokesperson told BetaKit that the tool’s “scope” depends on a police department’s policies.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all AI,” the spokesperson said. “It’s regionally trained and locally configured.”

The AI tool is meant to help understaffed emergency dispatch centres receive only the critical calls that require their assistance, leaving fewer distressed people on hold. According to a 2023 survey of 9-1-1 call centres in the United States (US), one in four dispatcher jobs were left unfilled. Nearly every respondent reported losing employees in 2022.

Hyper said it will use the funding to expand its footprint across the US. The company added that its first agency partners are now graduating from early pilots to full 24/7 live operations with its tool. Canada also has its own issues with lengthy wait times for emergency service calls, and Hyper told BetaKit that its service is live in Canada with “some of the largest police and sheriff’s departments in Ontario,” but declined to disclose which ones.

Feature image courtesy Hyper.