Elyos AI, a UK-based startup building AI agents for the trades and field services industry, has raised $13 million in Series A funding to accelerate product development and international expansion.
The round was led by Blackbird Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator and Pi Labs. This brings Elyos AI's total funding to $16 million.
Founded in 2023 as part of the Y Combinator programme, Elyos AI builds AI customer support agents designed specifically for the trades. The agents answer inbound calls, follow up on missed calls, handle outbound customer communication, manage email workflows, and book jobs directly into the systems trades businesses already use.
As co-founder Adrian Johnston puts it: "Trades businesses are overwhelmed by calls, emails, and admin, and that friction directly costs them revenue. 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."
The company targets plumbers, electricians, HVAC teams, fire and security operators, and facilities managers. These aren't generic chatbots. The agents behave like effective front-office staff, deeply integrated, always available, and trained on the realities of trade businesses.
Elyos AI points to strong customer traction since launching. Customers report higher booking rates, faster response times, fewer missed calls, and lower operational overhead.
One example is Amax, a fire and security company in London. "Before using Elyos, one of the biggest issues was the number of calls that were coming through," said Tejas Mehta, Managing Director at Amax. "Elyos AI agents now handle 30% of technical calls with no human intervention. We're now in a situation where we can't imagine not working with Elyos."
The founding team brings deep experience in field services. Philippa Brown and Panos Stravopodis previously worked at OVO and Bulb Energy, two of the UK's largest field services businesses. Brown ran operations for over 1,000 engineers, while Stravopodis built the operating systems those engineers relied on. Johnston is a second-time founder whose previous company, Una Brands, reached $70 million ARR and raised $100 million in funding.
James Palmer from Blackbird Ventures said: "Elyos is going after a massive vertical market, and their deep understanding of trades businesses is evident in how well their voice agents perform in the real world. Their growing traction and genuine customer love are powerful signals of product quality."
Faisal Butt, Managing Partner at Pi Labs, added: "Trade services is a multi-billion-dollar industry underpinning how the built world functions, yet it has long been underserved by modern software. Elyos AI agents are helping trade businesses capture more revenue, improve customer experience and increase margins with a leaner operations team."
With this Series A, Elyos AI plans to expand its engineering, operations and go-to-market teams, deepen integrations with leading field-service job management systems, and launch new AI agent capabilities across voice, email, and messaging. The company is also planning international expansion in 2026.
The funding comes as the UK continues to attract significant tech investment, with AI startups in particular seeing strong investor interest.
Elyos AI is currently hiring across engineering, product, operations, and go-to-market roles.
For more rounds like this, see London startup funding and UK AI startup funding in Bizztor's UK startup funding data, which tracks UK startup rounds since 2023.
Other UK vertical AI rounds Bizztor has covered include VerbaFlo's £5.2M seed round for AI in residential property.
For a large-company example of AI handling customer calls, see how Virgin Media O2 cut call transfers by 1.3 million.
