How Melbourne startup Phonely got into Y Combinator and why it believes voice is the next AI frontier — Capital Brief

Last week, Apple announced that it would revamp its voice assistant Siri with generative AI technology. This was followed by the unveiling of AmazonThe e-commerce giant unveiled its own “North Star for Alexa” last year when it unveiled a new, large-scale language model to help develop an improved smart speaker. And one of the world’s best-known tech investors Andreessen-Horowitz has just published a dissertation on why it is time to reinvent telephony with AI.

It looks like voice could be the next frontier for the investment hotbed of generative AI, and one Australian startup seems to be generating the most excitement and securing a place in the coveted Y-combinator.

Based in Melbourne Telephone AI is an AI receptionist who can have a two-way phone conversation that sounds and feels like talking to a human. The co-founders of Will Bodewes And Nisal Ranasinghe will fly to California later this month to launch Silicon Valley’s most prestigious accelerator program.

“There is a lot of investor interest in the fact that speech is one of the better use cases for language models,” said Phonely CEO Bodewes Capital Brief“I think Y Combinator and a lot of people in the investment world see that.”

Bodewes’ view is in line with that of Apple, Amazon and Googlewho have collectively invested several million in their voice assistants 2.0. They believe that generative AI and large language models have the potential to transform the clunky first iterations of Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant into devices that develop memories, respond based on previous interactions and feel like a real conversation.