In the U.S., emergency call centers are buckling under demand, 80% report chronic understaffing, and dispatchers waste critical seconds on non-urgent inquiries. At peak times, hold times can stretch into minutes, forcing true emergencies to queue behind routine calls. Training a single dispatcher takes over a year of classroom instruction, supervised fieldwork, and escalation certification, leaving many centers perpetually shorthanded.
Meanwhile, roughly 60% of incoming 911 calls involve non-life-threatening issues, think noise complaints, lost pets, or public nuisances, yet they consume the same dispatcher attention as genuine crises. Every misplaced second can mean a delayed response to heart attacks, house fires, or violent crimes.
Enter Hyper, the San Francisco–based voice AI startup that today emerged from stealth with a $6.3 million round led by Eniac Ventures, with participation from Ripple Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures, VSC Ventures, Tusk Venture Partners, K5 Global, Four Acres Capital, TMV, Success Venture Partners, Blue Moon, Trillick Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Headline, and the Yukon Investors Collective.
The company’s tech promises to leverage the latest voice AI to instantly answer 911 calls in over 30 languages, handle routine requests without delay, and route only true emergencies to human dispatchers, freeing teams to focus on saving lives.
Tech Built from the Ground Up for Public Safety
Most voice AI today powers customer support for industries like banking, retail, and travel – handling routine tasks like balance inquiries, password resets, or flight changes. Hyper’s approach is fundamentally different: it’s built for the high-stakes world of public safety. “We purpose built ours for public safety,” explains Damian McCabe, CPO and co-founder. “Hyper is trained on 911 call recordings, so it understands what matters, what doesn’t, and when to escalate.” This focus allows Hyper to fully handle routine calls, saving minutes, freeing dispatchers to concentrate on critical incidents.
Hyper’s initial agency partners have already moved past early pilots into 24/7 live operations, marking a milestone toward repeatable, scalable rollouts. The company is now executing a targeted outbound strategy to expand across the U.S., aiming to equip every community with an always-on emergency response assistant.
Investors are impressed by both the technology and the team’s public-sector fluency. “What got us excited about Hyper wasn’t just the tech. It’s the team – they truly get the complexity of public infrastructure and how to apply AI at a real-world scale,” says Nihal Mehta, Founding GP at Eniac Ventures. “This isn’t some gimmicky voice AI. They’re tackling a massive, urgent problem that impacts millions of lives every single day.”
A Team with AI and Infrastructure Experience
Hyper’s co-founders bring deep experience in scaling voice automation and AI products. CEO Ben Sanders previously co-founded Clearco and Presto, one of the earliest drive-thru voice platforms that went public via SPAC, and sold Proof to Daylight Automation. McCabe held product leadership roles at Uber, Meta, Instagram, and IBM, and founded Connected, which grew to 200 employees before its acquisition.
With its new funding, Hyper plans to deepen its language support, expand integrations with public-safety dispatch systems, and build out analytics to help agencies track call volumes, response times, and operational efficiency. As emergency response systems buckle under growing call volumes and staffing shortages, the startup aims to ensure that every community, urban or rural, has instant access to a 24/7 voice AI assistant.
In a world where seconds save lives, Hyper’s vision is clear: “Dispatchers are overwhelmed, and every second counts,” says Sanders. “Hyper filters out the noise so they can stay focused on the calls that save lives.”
