Elyos AI raises $13m to answer the phones for trades businesses
The London startup sells voice and email agents to plumbers, electricians and fire and security firms – a test of whether small service businesses will hand their front office to AI
- The round takes Elyos AI’s total funding to $16m (£11.9m).
- Y Combinator and Pi Labs also took part in the round.
- Elyos was founded in 2023 as part of the Y Combinator program.
- The company is registered in England and Wales as Elyos Energy UK Ltd.
For a small trades firm, a front-office agent is one of the easier AI purchases to judge, because the test is jobs booked rather than vague productivity gains. Before signing, check that the agent writes into the job management system already in use, how it hands a caller to a person when it is unsure and where call recordings and customer data are stored. A single reference customer chosen by the vendor proves little, so ask for a trial on the firm’s own call volume.
“We’re building AI agents that work like effective front-office staff: answering every call, booking every job, and integrating deeply into the systems trades already use.”Adrian Johnston, co-founder, Elyos AI
Elyos AI, a London-based developer of AI agents for trades businesses, has raised a $13m (£9.7m) Series A round led by Blackbird Ventures, it announced in January 2026.
Its agents answer inbound calls, follow up missed calls, handle outbound messages and email, and book jobs straight into the job management systems trades firms already use. Its market also takes in heating, ventilation and air conditioning teams and facilities managers, and Elyos says adoption has been rapid across the UK and beyond.
The company says the money will go on hiring across engineering, operations and go-to-market teams, deeper integrations with field-service job management software, new agent capabilities across voice, email and messaging, and international expansion in 2026. Its announcement quotes Tejas Mehta, managing director of London fire and security firm Amax, saying Elyos agents now handle 30% of its technical calls with no human intervention.
Sources
- Elyos AI, “Elyos AI Raises a $13M Series A to Build the AI Agents for the Trades”, company blog, January 2026. https://elyos.ai/blog/elyos-ai-raises-a-13m-series-a-to-build-ai-agents-trades
- UKTN, “AI platform for the trades raises £10m Series A round”, 19 January 2026. https://www.uktech.news/ai/ai-platform-for-the-trades-raises-10m-series-a-round-20260119
