Incept AI, a company bringing voice AI to the real world—starting with noisy restaurant drive-thru and phone orders—today announced a $3 million pre-seed round led by Rally Ventures, with participation from 10VC.
In connection with the deal, Ben Fried, a venture partner with Rally Ventures and the former CIO of Google, will join Incept AI’s Board of Directors.
Since emerging during the pandemic, voice AI order-taking has struggled to meet its potential for restaurant operators seeking to optimize labor productivity, provide compelling recommendations, and maintain peak efficiency throughout the day. And early solutions depend on Natural Language Understanding (NLU), which consistently failed to deliver high accuracy. As foundation models like OpenAI’s GPT, Google’s Gemini, and High-Flyer’s DeepSeek advanced, audio input emerged as the last mile challenge to surpass 97% accuracy— a milestone Incept AI achieved since its May 2024 launch.
Incept AI brings voice AI to real-world environments through its pioneering audio neural networks, which process noise, acoustic echo, and interfering speakers in challenging settings. Its proprietary Incept Neural Engine ensures accurate order-taking without relying on staff or call centers. Natively and seamlessly integrating with foundation models, menus, and POS systems, Incept AI helps restaurants stay nimble, increase profits, and deliver a consistently friendly guest experience.
Incept AI will use the funding to accelerate the development of its neural audio processing stack. The company will also broaden the rollout of its pilot deployments, which are currently in progress at multiple 1,000+ unit chains.
KEY QUOTES:
“AI voice agents have handled restaurant orders for years, but no provider has achieved 97%+ accuracy without human intervention. This limits AI order-taking’s scalability. Now is the right time for a new approach in this space, and we’re excited to have the backing of Rally Ventures and 10VC.”
– Umut Isik, Co-Founder and CEO of Incept AI
“We see a massive opportunity in Incept AI’s novel approach to solving voice AI’s biggest challenge—accuracy and reliability in real-world environments. The team has a strong technical thesis and overall vision, and they’ve demonstrated impressive early traction.”
– Ben Fried, Venture Partner at Rally Ventures
