Reecall is marking its fresh start with a new funding round. The Lyon-based startup, which specializes in voice AI, has announced a new €3.5 million round led by Founders Future, the fund founded by Marc Menasé (a shareholder in Maddyness, editor’s note).

Holnest, the family office of Jean-Michel Aulas, former president of Olympique Lyonnais, and Mesh, the seed fund launched by the CCI Lyon Métropole Saint-Étienne Roanne, also participated in the deal, along with business angels, including Francis Nappez, co-founder of BlaBlaCar, who joins the board on this occasion. Reecall’s previous funding round dates back to September 2022. At the time, Evolem, which reinvested in the new round, Newfund and Kima Ventures also took part.

Founded by Maxime Trouché and Raphaël Szymocha, the French company initially developed a conversational AI solution to simplify the management of incoming requests in call centers and corporate support services. But last year, after handling more than 30 million calls in production, Reecall shifted gears and moved toward a white-label service, enabling its customers to create and deploy voice AI capabilities under their own brands.

At the time, this represented a risk, as the company was profitable. But the rise of telephone-based conversational agents prompted Reecall’s executives to take the lead. “We had a product that worked and satisfied customers. Yet we questioned everything because the real bottleneck in the market was elsewhere: no one knew how to industrialize voice AI across a large base of end customers. This pivot isn’t a change of direction; it’s the culmination of five years of experience in the field,” explains Maxime Trouche, co-founder and CEO of Reecall.

While the pivot could have raised concerns among investors on paper, it was welcomed by Founders Future, which is leading the startup’s new funding round. “In three years, most business software will include a conversational layer, and very few will build it themselves. Value will shift toward those who know how to industrialize it. Reecall had the courage to leave a model that was working in order to position itself exactly there,” says Louis Sautet, Partner at Founders Future, explaining the transatlantic fund’s investment in the Lyon-based company.

Reecall says its new approach has enabled it to quadruple its revenue in eight months, although it has not disclosed precise figures. The company says it has notably won customers such as Alcatel-Lucent, Simplify and Obat. It now plans to use the funds raised to expand its workforce and grow across Europe.