DIALPAD

Craig Walker has a very specific talent. He builds phone software and sells it to Google.

In 2005 he co-founded GrandCentral, a service that gave you one number for all your phones. Google bought it in 2007 and turned it into Google Voice.

Walker ran communications products at Google for a while, then left. In 2011 he started Switch Communications with John Rector and Brian Peterson.

It first launched a group call product called UberConference, then a full business phone system. Eventually the whole company took the Dialpad name.

Dialpad sells cloud phone service to businesses, same basic idea as RingCentral. Companies pay a monthly per-seat fee for calling, video, and messaging with no hardware.

The difference is what Dialpad bolts on top. Its AI listens to every call and writes it down live.

For a sales team, that means the software can suggest what to say next while the rep is still talking. For support, it flags unhappy customers automatically.

You are not just buying a phone. You are buying a phone that takes notes and gives advice.

The flagship is Dialpad Connect, the AI business phone system. Dialpad Ai Contact Center handles customer support teams.

Dialpad Ai Sales coaches reps during live calls. Under all of it runs DialpadGPT, the company's own AI model trained on business conversations rather than the open internet.

The through-line is automatic call summaries, which turn every conversation into written notes without anyone lifting a finger.

Dialpad bet on AI years before it was cool. It bought a speech recognition startup called TalkIQ in 2018 and built the analysis directly into its own platform instead of renting it from someone else.

That let it pitch AI-powered calling long before ChatGPT made AI a household word. Big backers helped too.

Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, ICONIQ, and even T-Mobile put money in, which gave Dialpad credibility and carrier connections in a crowded market.

Dialpad is stuck in the middle. Above it sit RingCentral and Microsoft, giants with huge sales teams and enterprise deals.

Below it are cheaper tools that do good enough calling. To win, Dialpad has to convince companies its AI is worth switching for.

That was easier to argue in 2021 than it is now, when Microsoft Teams and Zoom have shipped their own AI features for free. Dialpad has not gone public and has not raised a big round since 2021, which in this market is a long, quiet stretch.

Dialpad has raised about $476 million total. Andreessen Horowitz backed it early.

Google Ventures, ICONIQ Capital, OMERS, Amasia, Section 32, Work-Bench, and T-Mobile Ventures joined over the years. The big one was a $170 million Series F in December 2021 led by ICONIQ, which valued Dialpad at $2.2 billion.

Founder Craig Walker still runs the company as CEO.