Mountain View-based startup Lace AI — founded by Bulgarian engineers and maintaining a major R&D centre in Sofia — has raised $14 million in seed funding to advance its AI-powered revenue intelligence platform for call centres. The round was led by Bek Ventures, with participation from Horizon VC, LAUNCHub Ventures (one of Bulgaria’s leading VCs), Snowflake co-founder Marcin Zukowski, Vivino founder Heini Zachariassen, and Payhawk co-founder Hristo Borisov. This brings Lace AI’s total funding to $19 million, including a previously undisclosed $5 million pre-seed round led by Canvas Ventures in early 2022.
Lace AI plans to use the investment to expand R&D, advance AI innovation at its Sofia research centre, and triple its team size to support soaring demand in the home services industry. Its rapid growth and global investor backing are making it Bulgaria’s fastest-growing startup and a rising star in the international tech ecosystem.
That said, here are 4 things to know about Lace AI.
Founders with deeptech experience
Before launching Lace AI in 2022, co-founder Boris Valkov worked at Meta, contributing to PyTorch, one of the world’s leading machine learning libraries. He teamed up with Stan Stoyanov, a fellow software engineer with experience at VMware. Their combined expertise in large-scale machine learning and enterprise software gave them the foundation to build a platform that analyses conversational data at scale, competing with solutions from global tech giants.
Lace AI’s co-founder, Boris Valkov, credits his early exposure to customer service for sparking the idea behind the company. Growing up in his family’s grocery store, he learned the power of human connection through telephone conversations, a lesson that eventually shaped his vision of blending AI with service calls to recover lost revenue for home services businesses.
Analyses 100% of calls
Unlike many call analytics tools that review a limited sample of customer calls, Lace AI uses advanced AI models to evaluate every single service call a business receives. This full-coverage model helps identify qualification gaps, customer objections, and mishandled calls in real-time, providing companies with the data needed to recover potential sales and significantly increase revenue.
The platform targets the $650 billion home services and remodelling industry explicitly, where about 80% of revenue still comes through phone calls, despite significant digital marketing investments. Lace AI’s technology is transforming how these traditional businesses, often overlooked by the tech sector, convert calls into revenue.
Lace AI’s R&D centre in Sofia has quickly become one of the largest AI hubs in the region, employing top-tier Bulgarian engineers. The company’s dual-location strategy, headquartered in Mountain View but with a significant presence in Bulgaria, enables it to access US capital and customers while leveraging Bulgaria’s deep technical talent pool and lower operational costs. This bridge between Silicon Valley and Sofia is a model for next-generation Bulgarian startups.
Generated massive ARR growth in 2024
Lace AI’s impact is tangible: businesses using its platform have achieved booking rates as high as 98% and boosted net sales by up to 35%, without incurring additional marketing expenses or hiring new staff. In one case, a client with 25 agents handling 18,000 calls per month saw a 23% increase in qualified bookings and a 5.5-fold reduction in quality assurance costs after just one month. In 2024, Lace AI’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) surged by 1,000%, underscoring its explosive growth.
Lace AI makes sophisticated AI technology accessible to traditional home service businesses that typically lack advanced tech tools. By packaging elite machine learning into an easy-to-use SaaS product, Lace AI is enabling non-technical companies to unlock value from every customer call.
SaaS model with 100+ customers
Operating on a monthly subscription model, Lace AI charges per agent or customer service representative. Despite launching commercially only at the end of 2023, it already works with over 100 companies—including A1 Garage Door Service and Eco Plumbers—demonstrating strong product-market fit and rapid adoption.
Next up for Lace AI: deeper CRM integrations, more innovative real-time analytics, and real-time coaching capabilities for agents. The company’s Sofia research centre is driving these innovations, positioning Lace AI to further transform the home services industry—a sector that has historically been resistant to digital change.
What’s next?
Lace AI’s rise is a signal of Bulgaria’s growing influence in the global tech ecosystem. By combining world-class Bulgarian engineering with Silicon Valley ambition, Lace AI is redefining how overlooked industries unlock value from every customer call. With explosive growth, top-tier investors, and a bold innovation roadmap, Lace AI is set to become a flagship example of Bulgarian tech success on the world stage.
