Ring turned to Vapi in mid-Q4 last year, when it was weighing whether to expand call-center capacity, rely more heavily on traditional automated phone systems, or deploy AI agents that could respond more naturally to customers, Vapi chief executive Jordan Dearsley (pictured above, left) told TechCrunch. Dearsley believes Ring chose Vapi because it offered Ring engineers granular control over how the AI agents behaved in live customer interactions.

Jason Mitura, vice president of software development at Amazon Ring, said Ring’s customer satisfaction scores improved after deploying Vapi’s platform and that the company’s teams were able to tune the AI agent experience without depending on engineering. “A lot of AI tools promise great outcomes — Vapi has delivered on them,” he said.

Founded by Dearsley and his University of Waterloo classmate Nikhil Gupta (pictured above, right), Vapi grew out of an AI therapist that Dearsley built in 2023 for conversations during his daily walks. The pair, who had gone through Y Combinator with productivity startup Superpowered, found that while few people wanted the therapy product itself, startups were increasingly interested in the low-latency voice infrastructure underneath it. This led them to pivot to Vapi and launch the platform publicly in 2024.

Vapi provides tools for companies to build, deploy, and manage voice agents across customer support, lead qualification, appointment scheduling, and outbound sales.