Osborne Clarke advises redalpine on USD 15 million seed financing round of AI-powered customer operations platform telli

Osborne Clarke has provided legal advice to redalpine, a leading European venture capital investor focused on technology-driven growth companies, on its participation in the seed financing round of Berlin-based AI start-up telli. telli, a company specialised in AI-powered customer operations for B2C businesses, raised USD 15 million in the round, increasing its total funding volume to USD 18.5 million. redalpine acted as lead investor; further funds were provided by Cherry Ventures, Y Combinator, Mutschler and several business angels.

telli was founded in 2024 by Finn zur Muehlen, Philipp Baumanns and Seb Hapte-Selassie. The founding team combines operational experience in rapidly building sales and service organisations – including at energy and heating technology company Enpal – with proven software and AI expertise. On the basis of this combination, telli is developing a platform that enables companies to deploy AI agents via voice, chat, SMS, WhatsApp and email to automate customer-facing processes while at the same time improving the quality of customer communications.

At the core of the platform is AI co-worker “Charlie”, who supports customer service teams in setting up AI agents, connecting system landscapes, analysing conversations, identifying issues and continuously optimising customer operations on a data-driven basis. telli’s agents already handle millions of customer interactions for companies ranging from SMEs to large enterprises, qualifying leads, booking appointments, conducting follow-ups and resolving service requests – among others for Sky, Viessmann, Enpal and Vaillant.

The seed financing round is seen as a signal for the European market for AI-powered voice and multi-channel agents. It demonstrates that international investors are willing to invest early and substantially in platforms that rethink customer operations and scale human teams through specialised AI co-workers.

“We’ve followed this space for quite some time and the telli founders are the most technically exceptional and complementary team we’ve encountered,” says Sebastian Becker, General Partner at redalpine. “The value voice agents will unlock across enterprise automation is immense, and we strongly believe telli is in pole position to capture the opportunity.”

Comprehensive advice on structuring the seed financing round

Osborne Clarke provided redalpine with comprehensive advice on the corporate and contractual aspects of its participation in the seed financing round. This included in particular structuring the investment, negotiating the financing documentation with the group of international investors, and aligning the venture capital-typical participation and governance provisions with the requirements of a growth-oriented AI and software company.

The Osborne Clarke team led by Maximilian Vocke comprised Robert Marx and Dr Espen Schneider (all Corporate / Transactions), Dr Florian Reiling and Luisa Jakobs (both IP), Dr Florian Eisenmenger (IT), Dr Philipp Stein (Commercial) and Anna Lehner (Employment).