Guava, a Los Angeles-based developer platform for artificial intelligence voice agents, has raised $12.5m in seed funding as it looks to bring more reliable automated conversations to regulated industries, including insurance.

Acrew Capital led the round, with participation from Flourish Ventures, WillowTree Ventures, Clocktower Ventures and existing pre-seed investor Commerce Ventures. The company will use the capital to advance its models and products and build a go-to-market team targeting enterprises and business process outsourcers (BPOs).

The funding comes as insurers and other regulated businesses explore how voice AI could support customer interactions. From policy enquiries and customer support to claims-related conversations, automated voice agents could help organisations manage growing call volumes. However, deploying the technology in real-world settings presents challenges around reliability, response times and the ability to handle complex conversations.

Guava is positioning its platform around these issues, arguing that voice AI systems can perform well in demonstrations but struggle when exposed to high-volume, high-stakes customer calls. Its technology is designed to give businesses greater control over how agents behave, while managing the underlying voice interaction.

The company launched its first public model, Daytona, in September. More than a dozen enterprise customers are already using the model, which processes tens of thousands of calls each day. Daytona has also ranked in the top 10 on Coval’s word error rate benchmark, frequently placing first or second.

Guava’s technology builds on more than a decade of foundation model development by Gridspace, a voice research lab whose models were trained on more than 10 billion minutes of live conversations from regulated call centres.

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