Our Investment In Aurelian: AI Agents Powering the 911 Call Centers of the Future

Most Americans associate the Fourth of July with celebrations, barbecues, and fireworks. But for 911 call takers and dispatchers, July 4th is one of the busiest and toughest days of the year. 911 call takers are with us at our worst, during emergencies and traumatic events, and are a critical part of the infrastructure that keeps Americans safe.

A Public Safety Crisis

Still, working in a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), a 911 call center, is a highly stressful job with long hours. As a result, the industry is plagued by a labor shortage, with 1 in 4 PSAP seats remaining unfilled.¹

These call centers are overwhelmed by volume, yet 60-80% of calls come from the non-emergency line. As a result, wait times can become quite long. San Francisco, for example, has a target response time (includes answering the call and responding to it) of 60 minutes for non-emergency calls, a goal they’ve missed in 105 of the past 108 months!² In 2025, even this 60-minute goal seems far too long to wait on hold for simple tasks that AI agents can now handle (with a 0 second wait time) given advancements in generative AI-powered voice technology.

Source: SF.gov Response to Priority Calls ²

Seeing a way to leverage AI to make an impact on this public safety crisis, Max Keenan and James Liu founded Aurelian, a conversational AI platform that automates non-emergency calls (ex: loitering, parking tickets, noise complaints) for PSAPs. 

Agentic Public Safety

Aurelian’s voice agents talk or text with the caller, routing the caller to the right department, triaging the call, and collecting information for an officer/first responder. Once the call comes in, Aurelian’s agent can take action by:

• Validating the location

• Taking notes

• Adding the notes to the CAD system (PSAP’s system of record)

• Forwarding the call to emergency services (if it is in fact an emergency call) 

  And more!

We believe Aurelian’s unique advantage is the ability to apply this new AI voice technology to public safety, an industry that still primarily uses on-prem software. Given the stickiness of the CAD system, previous attempts to bring 911 call centers into the cloud era didn’t provide enough value to justify a rip and replace. 

Creating A New Category Of Software

Aurelian is creating a new category of software and doesn’t require a rip and replace of old systems. Their agents are doing work previously done by people, not software, and often the budget comes from labor spend for unfilled call taker seats that PSAPs are unable to fill. And while cloud-era players were only incrementally valuable over incumbents, Aurelian’s product is automating 74% of customer call volume without any human intervention.

“Aurelian is the only solution in the space that can automate the majority of an agency’s non-emergency calls while not being limited to predefined routes or scenarios.” 

-Derek Wilson, Operations Manager for Snohomish County 911, the second largest center in Washington³

Most of Aurelian’s customers are able to sole-source the product, a very strong signal of the unique product the team has built. Horizontal voice solutions and solutions built by incumbents lack critical capabilities that differentiate Aurelian’s product. 911 centers demand reliability, which means maintaining uptimes and eliminating hallucinations and false negatives (calls that come in through the non-emergency line but are actually emergencies). Reliability also means being there for customers 24/7 with support and offering white-glove deployments that allow the product to be customized to each 911 center’s unique workflow and tech stack (integrations to legacy, on-prem systems that don’t have APIs). Aurelian is able to win with AI where cloud-era players could not. 

The Future of 911

We’ve been deeply impressed by Max and James’ intensity, grit, and speed of shipping new product. In this industry, one bad deployment early on can kill a company, so their ability to execute has enabled them to impact a historically challenging industry as young founders. We are grateful to lead Aurelian’s $14M Series A financing and to partner with the team as they empower 911 centers to improve response times and outcomes for people across the United States. 

Aurelian is growing quickly and actively hiring across engineering, marketing, sales, and implementation teams. If you’d like to join, check out open roles here!