A new platform aims to give developers full control over AI voice agents by letting them write code instead of clicking through visual diagrams.
At a Glance
- VoiceRun closed a $5.5 million seed round led by Flybridge Capital on Wednesday
- The platform targets enterprise developers who want to build, test, and deploy voice agents in code
- Founders say no-code tools sacrifice quality, while high-end options take months to build
- Why it matters: Companies can launch AI phone services faster without surrendering customization to visual-interface limits
Nicholas Leonard and Derek Caneja founded VoiceRun last year after concluding that most voice agents suffer from design flaws. Low-code builders ship quickly but deliver brittle results, they said, whereas custom stacks demand months of specialized work.
“Developers and enterprises needed an alternative,” Leonard, the CEO, told News Of Philadelphia. “We realized the future of software would be coded, validated, and optimized by coding agents.”
Code-First Approach
VoiceRun replaces drag-and-drop conversation flows with raw code. Users script agent behavior, run A/B tests, and deploy with one click. Leonard argues that code is the native language of emerging coding agents, letting them iterate faster than visual tools allow.
Visual interfaces hit a wall on niche needs, he added. A different dialect, a unique hand-off rule, or a rare data lookup might be impossible unless the platform builder pre-built a widget.
“In code, it’s incredibly simple to do,” Leonard said. “There is a long tail of millions of examples of little things you might want to do that aren’t supported by the visual interface.”
Market Position
The startup positions itself between two extremes:
- No-code voice builders such as Bland and ReTell AI that spin up quick demos
- Deep frameworks like LiveKit and Pipecat that give maximum control but require heavy lifting
Leonard claims VoiceRun supplies global voice infrastructure plus an evaluation-driven lifecycle while keeping business-logic code and data in customer hands.
“We are closing the loop for end-to-end coding-agent development,” he said. “We expect developers to be supervising coding agents that write code, run tests, deploy, and propose improvements.”
Enterprise Focus
Early adopters include a restaurant-tech company rolling out an AI phone concierge for food reservations. Leonard sees customer service as a prime use case, arguing that today’s callers “feel relief” when a human answers because automation has historically failed them.
A Five9 survey last year found that 75 percent of respondents still prefer human agents for support calls. Leonard believes better tooling can reverse that perception, citing language barriers and fear of judgment as human-agent drawbacks.
“There were great cars before the Model T, but vehicles didn’t become ubiquitous until the assembly line,” he said. “There are great voice agents today, but they won’t be ubiquitous until the voice-agent factory is built. VoiceRun is that factory.”
Flybridge Capital led the $5.5 million seed round, announced Wednesday, to scale the platform. The deal arrives as AI-agent startups captured billions in funding last year amid broader generative-AI investment.
Key Takeaways
- VoiceRun gives developers code-level control instead of visual diagrams
- One-click deploy and built-in A/B testing aim to speed enterprise adoption
- Founders claim the product sits between brittle no-code tools and lengthy custom builds
- Fresh seed money will fuel growth as companies race to add voice automation
