Two Canadians raise USD $6.3 million for AI automation in 911 calls
Yukon-founded startup Hyper has announced the public launch of its AI-powered voice system for handling non-emergency calls routed to 9-1-1. The announcement comes alongside a USD $6.3 million investment led by Eniac Ventures. The funding includes additional investments from angel investors including, OpenAI, Neo Financial, and Pinterest.
Started by Canadians Damian McCabe and Ben Sanders, Hyper has developed a system to combat rising calls to understaffed emergency centres. The team is primarily based in Toronto. McCabe, formerly held leadership roles at Uber, Meta, Instagram, and IBM, while Sanders co-founded Clearo and developed drive-thru voice automation software, Presto.
According to Hyper, 80 per cent of call centres are understaffed. Training new dispatchers remains a lengthy process, taking over a year to complete, encompassing classroom instruction, supervised probation, and progression from call-taker to full dispatcher.
The company is already live with multiple police departments across Canada, said Hyper in a statement to TechDay. Rollout is underway across the US and first agency partners in Canada.
Hyper's AI listens, responds, and asks follow-up questions on 9-1-1 calls. The system then assesses whether the call needs to be escalated to a human. The software is available in 30 languages and can scale instantly, ensuring that no caller waits during peak call times.
"Most voice AI is built for customer support. We purpose-built ours for public safety," said Damian McCabe, CPO and co-founder of Hyper. "Hyper is trained on 9-1-1 call recordings, so it understands what matters, what doesn't, and when to escalate."
Routine or non-emergency calls, which account for roughly 60% of the total, consume dispatcher time and delay urgent responses. In peak hours, wait times can extend for several minutes, forcing critical emergencies to queue behind non-urgent matters.
"9-1-1 is one of those systems we all take for granted, but it's shockingly outdated and buckling under pressure," said Nihal Mehta, Founding General Partner at Eniac Ventures. "What got us excited about Hyper wasn't just the tech. It's the team - they truly get the complexity of public infrastructure and how to apply AI at a real-world scale. This isn't some gimmicky voice AI."
Funding was led by Eniac Ventures, with participation from various investment groups including Ripple Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures, VSC Ventures, Tusk Venture Partners, K5 Global, Four Acres Capital, TMV, Success Venture Partners, Blue Moon, Trillick Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Headline, and the Yukon Investors Collective. Individual investors and founders associated with companies such as OpenAI, Cohere, OpenGov, PagerDuty, and URide also participated.
Hyper is currently integrated in select Public Safety Access Points and Emergency Communications Centres across North America.
"Dispatchers are overwhelmed, and every second counts. Hyper filters out the noise so they can stay focused on the calls that save lives," said Ben Sanders, CEO and co-founder of Hyper.
