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.
- The company's annual recurring revenue grew 10 times over since its previous $20 million raise in 2020, reaching $60 million.
- Clients include Capital One, RBC, Taco Bell 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.
When a bank customer calls to check their balance, do you really need to fire up the same technology that powers ChatGPT? Omilia's CEO Dimitris Vassos says no, and he has the revenue growth to back it up.
The Athens-based company, which first reported by TechCrunch AI, has just closed a $67 million Series B round led by Expedition Growth Capital. Omilia has been building software that handles customer calls automatically, without a human agent, since 2002, making it one of the oldest players in a space now crowded with well-funded startups.
What does Omilia actually do?
Omilia builds what the industry calls virtual agents, software that answers phone calls and messages on behalf of companies and can carry out tasks on its own, such as resetting a password or processing a payment. The newer, shinier version of this technology is a large language model, the same kind of AI behind chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude, which can hold open-ended conversations.
Vassos argues that using a large language model for every query is wasteful and expensive. Many incoming calls are simple and predictable. Asking what your account balance is, for instance, needs a quick database lookup, not a sophisticated AI system.
"You may have a bazooka, but if your enemy is near you, you need a knife," Vassos told us. "This is the reality of the contact centre, where you need multiple tools."
The company mixes older, cheaper automation with newer AI where it genuinely adds value, which Vassos says keeps costs lower for both Omilia and its clients.
Who is using it?
Omilia's customer list reads like a roll call of large financial services firms: Capital One, Discover and Royal Bank of Canada are among them, along with the UK's Department for Work and Pensions. Quick-service restaurant chains are a newer focus. Taco Bell is already a client, with Omilia's technology running across more than 1,000 outlets for voice-based ordering. Two more unnamed US restaurant chains are reportedly in talks.
One note of caution: a widely reported story claimed a Taco Bell ordering glitch allowed a customer to order 18,000 cups of water. Vassos says Omilia's records show no such incident occurred. Taco Bell had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
What does this mean for customers?
If you call a bank, insurer or fast-food chain and hear an automated voice, there is a reasonable chance software like Omilia's is handling it. When it works well, you get a faster answer at any hour. When it goes wrong, you get stuck in a loop that can't understand you. The company's pitch is that picking the right tool for each query, not deploying heavy AI everywhere, reduces those failure points.
What happens next?
Omilia will use the new capital to open a US office, a market that already generates a significant share of its revenue. The company is hiring a chief revenue officer, a chief marketing officer and a VP of revenue operations to push sales.
Vassos is blunt about his ambitions. "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 voice calls over the phone, not 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 does reduce the number of calls reaching human agents. The company positions 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.
