The 22-year-old AI call centre company that thinks chatbots are overrated just raised $67 million
Athens-based Omilia has been automating customer phone calls since 2002. Its CEO says rivals are making a costly mistake by using heavy AI for every task, no matter how simple.
Key points
- Omilia, founded in Athens in 2002, closed a $67 million Series B round led by Expedition Growth Capital.
- Annual recurring revenue grew tenfold since a $20 million raise in 2020, reaching $60 million.
- Clients include Capital One, Discover, RBC and the UK's Department for Work and Pensions.
- Omilia has around 500 employees and expects to reach 600 by the end of 2025.
- The new funding will open a US office and fill three senior commercial roles.
Omilia's CEO Dimitris Vassos has a simple answer when asked whether a bank customer checking their balance needs the same technology powering ChatGPT: no. He has the revenue growth to back it up.
The Athens-based company just closed a $67 million Series B led by Expedition Growth Capital, first reported by TechCrunch AI. Omilia has been building software that handles customer calls without human agents since 2002, placing it among the oldest players in a space now crowded with well-funded startups.
What does Omilia actually do?
Omilia builds virtual agents: software that answers phone calls and messages on behalf of companies, carrying out tasks such as resetting a password or processing a payment autonomously. The shinier alternative is a large language model (LLM), the AI architecture behind open-ended chatbots like ChatGPT, which can hold fluid conversations but costs considerably more to run.
Vassos argues that routing every query through an LLM is wasteful. Most incoming calls are simple. A balance enquiry needs a database lookup, not a sophisticated reasoning engine.
"You may have a bazooka, but if your enemy is near you, you need a knife," Vassos told TechCrunch AI. "This is the reality of the contact centre, where you need multiple tools."
Omilia blends older, cheaper automation with newer AI where it genuinely adds value, which Vassos says keeps unit economics healthy for both Omilia and its clients.
Who is using it?
Omilia's client list leans heavily toward financial services: Capital One, Discover, Royal Bank of Canada and the UK's Department for Work and Pensions are among the names Vassos cited. Quick-service restaurants are a newer focus. Taco Bell already runs the technology across more than 1,000 outlets for voice ordering, and two unnamed US chains are reportedly in talks.
One disputed incident is worth noting. Reports circulated that a glitch in Taco Bell's ordering system let a customer place an order for 18,000 cups of water. Vassos says his company's records show nothing of the sort happened. Taco Bell had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Our 3 August story on AI voice ordering at fast-food chains found the sector splitting into winners and those still working out failures, which makes Omilia's claimed reliability figures worth watching closely.
What does this mean for customers?
If you call a financial firm or fast-food chain and reach an automated voice, software like Omilia's may well be handling it. Done well, that means faster answers at any hour. Done badly, it means a loop that cannot understand you. Omilia's pitch is that matching the tool to the task, rather than deploying the heaviest AI available by default, is what cuts those failure points.
What happens next?
Omilia will use the capital to establish a US office, a market already generating a significant share of its revenue. Three hires are planned: a chief revenue officer, a chief marketing officer, and a VP of revenue operations.
Vassos is direct about the ambition. "We care about growing steadily and building the foundations for a billion-dollar revenue company in the next three years."
Common questions
Is Omilia a new company riding the AI hype?
No. Omilia was founded in 2002, more than two decades before the current wave of AI startups. It has raised only two external rounds of funding in that time.
How does this differ from chatbots on websites?
Omilia focuses mainly on phone calls rather than text chat, though it also covers messaging channels. Voice automation is technically harder because spoken language is messier and faster than typed text.
Does this mean more customer service jobs will disappear?
Omilia's software is designed to handle routine queries automatically, which reduces calls reaching human agents. The company frames this as freeing agents for complex problems rather than replacing them outright, though the broader impact on call centre employment is a live debate across the industry.
