Toma Answers the Call of Auto Dealerships with $17M Series A

For an industry as integral to American life as auto dealerships, it’s remarkable how much customer communication still gets dropped. Nearly half of dealership calls go unanswered, a staggering figure in a business where missed calls often mean missed revenue, missed relationships, and ultimately, missed opportunities. In this gap, Toma, a voice AI startup, has found its opportunity.

Toma just raised $17 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Y Combinator, Scale Angels, and several angels from both the tech and auto worlds. The funding marks a turning point for the young company, founded in early 2024 by Monik Pamecha and Anthony Krivonos, as they grow their team from scratch.

Finding Their Voice in Auto Retail

“They just called us up and said ‘we are drowning in phone calls,’” Pamecha told TechCrunch, describing the moment car dealerships reached out unexpectedly during Toma’s early forays into voice AI. At the time, the team had been focused on highly regulated industries like finance and healthcare. But the sheer urgency and relative lack of compliance red tape in auto retail prompted a swift pivot.

The two founders embedded themselves in dealerships across Oklahoma and Mississippi, taking on tasks like tire rotations and manning phones to better understand the operational pain points. “We’re bringing the latest advancements in AI to an industry that touches people’s lives everyday,” Pamecha later wrote on LinkedIn. “45% of all dealership calls today go unanswered due to staffing pressures resulting in a variety of losses: lost revenue, lost customers and lost trust.”