VoiceRun secures $5.5 million for developing its voice agent factory platform.

Nicholas Leonard and Derek Caneja set out to create AI voice agents, but they quickly identified common design flaws in many existing solutions.

Some agents were built with no-code tools, allowing for rapid deployment but often resulting in subpar quality. Others were developed by companies investing months in building specialized, resource-intensive tools. "Developers and enterprises needed a better option," Leonard explained to TechCrunch, noting their shared belief that the future of software would be "coded, validated, and optimized by coding agents."

"These two insights, combined with a historical perspective, inspired us to create VoiceRun," said Leonard, the company's CEO. Caneja serves as the CTO.

They launched VoiceRun last year—a platform enabling developers and coding assistants to deploy and scale voice agents. Many current low-code platforms rely on visual diagrams for building voice agents, where users map conversation flows and input prompts into boxes to define agent behavior. According to Leonard, this approach can become difficult to manage.

VoiceRun, in contrast, allows users to program their voice agents' behavior directly through code, offering greater flexibility and control. "Code is the native language for coding agents," Leonard stated. "They perform significantly better operating in code than within a visual interface."

Visual interfaces also have limited configuration options. For instance, creating a voice agent that speaks a specific dialect can be challenging if the visual tool doesn't support that feature.

"But in code, it's incredibly straightforward," he added. "There are countless specific functionalities users might want that simply aren't supported by visual builders."

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Beyond supporting coding agents, VoiceRun also enables A/B testing and one-click instant deployment.

The platform targets enterprise developers, assisting companies in integrating AI into customer service or launching voice-based products. Leonard cited an example of working with a restaurant-tech company to develop an AI phone concierge for managing food reservations.

On Wednesday, the company announced a $5.5 million seed funding round led by Flybridge Capital.

The AI agent space is highly competitive, with startups in this sector securing billions in funding last year. Leonard positions VoiceRun between two market extremes: no-code voice builders like Bland and Retell AI for quick demos, and sophisticated developer tools like LiveKit and Pipecat for maximum control.

"We provide global voice infrastructure and an evaluation-driven lifecycle, while customers retain full ownership of their business logic code and data," he said. "Our key differentiator is closing the loop for end-to-end coding agent development. We envision developers supervising coding agents that write code, run tests, deploy, and propose improvements."

Leonard hopes VoiceRun will help build more reliable voice agents, ultimately improving public perception of automated voices. Currently, customers often "feel relief" when a human answers, "because voice automation has been brittle and ineffective."

A Five9 survey last year found that 75% of respondents still prefer human interaction for customer service. Leonard aims to shift this perception, noting that "human agents have their own limitations," such as language barriers or making customers feel judged.

"Great cars existed before the Model T, but vehicles didn't become ubiquitous until the assembly line," Leonard concluded. "Great voice agents exist today, but they won't become ubiquitous until the voice agent factory is built. VoiceRun is that factory."