Kea offers a closed-domain AI “virtual cashier” that conducts initial phone order intake for restaurants, handles routine orders, and routes to a human employee when needed. The system is focused on constrained menu vocabularies (e.g., pizza permutations) rather than general conversational AI. Kea is already live in more than 250 restaurants, including Papa John’s, Donatos and Primanti Brothers, and reports it saves restaurants an average of 10 hours of labor per week while increasing average order size by 23%. Founder and CEO Adam Ahmad frames the product as a response to chronic understaffing and the unsustainability of hefty third-party ordering fees. Kea’s demo experience includes collecting delivery details and processing orders end-to-end, with the option to transfer callers to staff. With new funding, the company aims to scale to 1,000 restaurants across 37 states in 2021. kea develops a proprietary Voice AI phone-ordering system that can take unlimited phone orders simultaneously and learns which types of drinks and snacks are most common with specific orders. The platform uses that data to enable meal bundling opportunities and to make suggestions based on customer needs. kea targets franchises and Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) as its primary customers. The company plans to use its recent funding to scale its Voice AI phone order platform across those channels. kea is led by founder and CEO Adam Ahmad. Financially, the company closed a nearly $3 million seed funding round to support growth.

Total raised

$13M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Nov 2020