Shraey Bhatia, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist at Leaping AI, a pioneering company revolutionizing enterprise businesses, call centers, and sales with self-improving Voice AI. Founded in Germany in August 2023, Leaping AI is part of Y Combinator's prestigious W25 batch, driving the future of AI-powered communication.
Episode Highlights:
- Shraey Bhatia transitioned from academia to startups after completing his PhD. His research initially focused on fact-checking and hallucinations in AI. Seeking new challenges, he co-founded Leaping AI, a voice AI startup, after moving from Australia to Berlin.
- The startup started in August 2023 with a vision for voice AI in sales, but after feedback, they pivoted to customer support with upselling features. Their breakthrough came when a German enterprise took a chance on them, helping them prove the tech could work.
- Initially focused on German enterprises, Leaping AI faced long sales cycles. In contrast, the U.S. market had faster decision-making and a stronger appetite for AI innovation, making it a better fit for scaling the company.
- Leaping AI is not just a call automation tool—it continuously evaluates and refines its own performance. It improves itself through AI-driven feedback loops, optimizing customer interactions over time without human intervention.
- After realizing Germany’s AI regulations and funding environment were limiting, the team spent time in San Francisco, applied to Y Combinator, and got accepted into YC Winter 2025. Now, they are scaling Leaping AI globally while maintaining a presence in Germany.
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Connect with Shraey Bhatia:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shraeybhatia/
https://www.leapingai.com/
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What is AIMinds?
Welcome to the AI Minds podcast, where we explore how the companies of tomorrow are built with an AI-first approach.
This series of episodes are brought to you by Deepgram the number one Speech to Text, Text to Speech, and voice API on the internet trusted by the world’s top Enterprises, Conversational AI Leaders, & Startups like Spotify, Twilio, NASA and Citi Bank.