{"id":92512,"title":"Toma: AI Platform for the $2T Automotive Industry","tagline":"Toma is on a mission to build world-class communication and support tools for America's high ticket industries, starting with automotive.","body":"### **Next-Gen Voice AI in a $2T Industry that Silicon Valley Overlooks**\n\nWe’re thrilled to share that Toma [**raised a $17M Series A**](https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/05/tomas-ai-voice-agents-have-taken-off-at-car-dealerships-and-attracted-funding-from-a16z/), led by **Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)**, who chose us after vetting every voice AI company in automotive. The wild part is that we got here through just word-of-mouth sales, without a sales team, and now power **hundreds of customers** across the U.S.\n\nSince graduating from YC, we’ve gone knee-deep into a trillion-dollar industry historically neglected by Silicon Valley–– automotive dealerships. We’ve spent half a year **living in them** to learn how they communicate with their customers, run their day-to-day operations, and provide both great and (usually) not-so-great customer experiences. To put it simply, **things are broken**.\n\nSo we built AI agents that fix it by:\n\n* Deploying **personalized agents**\n* **Automating inbound calls** with a low-latency, natural-sounding voice AI\n* Running **outbound SMS** campaigns that generate new revenue\n* **Deeply integrating** with automotive-specific software\n* Offering **insights and reporting** into every AI/customer interaction\n* Intelligently **alerting customers** when human intervention is needed\n\nWe’re now the **fastest-growing** AI platform in automotive, and we’re just getting started.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92512\u0026key=user_uploads/416691/65a56669-51b7-40ff-ad8e-4c443df5a09c)\n\n### **From YC Hack Project to Must-Have AI Employee**\n\nWe started Toma as **two engineers** ([Monik](https://www.linkedin.com/in/monikp/) \u0026 [Anthony](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonykrivonos/)) who didn’t want to build another generic chatbot. We flew around the country, shadowing advisors in hot service bays, listening to call recordings, and mapping dealership workflows in Figma. We **wrote code inside dealerships** as bugs and feature ideas were discovered alongside our users.\n\nWe took a YC prototype and turned it into a real product. Today, dealerships such as [Martin Management Group](https://www.toma.com/resources/case-study/how-ai-doubled-operational-margins-for-martin-management-group) and [Middletown Honda](https://www.toma.com/resources/case-study/how-toma-helps-middletown-honda-save-100k-annually) rely on Toma to handle **tens of thousands of calls** monthly. Calls that were previously missing entirely or requiring thousands of dollars to outsource to call centers.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92512\u0026key=user_uploads/416691/3a60abaf-e5fd-437a-8b4c-f38d911f215e)\n\n### **The Results Are Wild**\n\n* **Martin Management Group:** 9,000 service appointments booked in 90 days. $2M+ in revenue. 40% reduction in BDC workload.\n* **Middletown Honda:** 53% of inbound calls handled by AI. $100K+ saved annually. Zero missed calls during recall events.\n* **Nationwide:** Over 1 million call minutes handled by Toma since launch. Hundreds of thousands of hours of human time saved.\n* **Growth:** Surpassed 7-figures in ARR in less than one year while approaching 8 figures with over 100 dealerships using Toma across the U.S.\n\nThe best part is that vehicle owners love it, dealers love it, and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) love it because **Toma works very well**.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92512\u0026key=user_uploads/416691/85178e79-dde7-4ec7-b19e-b28691d601a4)\n\n### **Why This Industry Matters (and Why It’s Underserved)**\n\nCars are essential to how Americans live, work, and move, and they’re getting older. The average vehicle on the road is 12.6 years old. That means **more maintenance, more service calls, and more pressure** on dealerships to deliver better experiences.\n\nSilicon Valley has historically **ignored this space**. It’s messy, full of edge cases, and utilizes antiquated software, requiring a deep understanding of real-world operations. **That’s where we thrive.** We see a gold rush in how AI can revolutionize the automotive retail industry.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92512\u0026key=user_uploads/416691/e94c67ce-14f4-4b8a-8648-3b105052b1d9)\n\n### **Why This Industry is Just the Beginning**\n\n**Automotive** is one of many high-ticket, operationally complex industries in the U.S.—alongside insurance, home services, logistics, and healthcare—where communication is still largely **manual**, software is **legacy**, and workflows are deeply **idiosyncratic**.\n\nThese industries are slow-moving but massive, with billions of dollars lost every year due to inefficiencies. While we’re laser-focused on fixing communication in dealerships, Toma is **building the horizontal foundation for deploying production-grade AI assistants** across every high-value, high-friction service industry. We believe the future of operations will be AI-augmented, and we’re laying the rails.\n\n### **The Tech**\n\n**In-house**, we have built:\n\n* A SOTA **voice AI orchestration** pipeline\n* **Dynamic integration platform** for connecting to legacy software\n* Production-grade **agentic workflow** engine\n* **Agent evaluation** pipelines\n* **Prompt management** tools that allow us to support hundreds of customers as a 3-person ops team\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92512\u0026key=user_uploads/416691/2c4115f8-a2bf-433b-b7f3-30f4fa6ca0c3)\n\n### **Our Culture: Builders First, Always**\n\nToma was **built by engineers**, and we hire technically-minded people across all responsibilities. We move quickly, fix things, and build from the ground up. We care deeply about real-world impact and meticulous attention to detail.\n\nWe’re backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, Scale Angels, Flex Capital, Holman Automotive, and more. But more than anything, we’re backed by many of our own dealerships and their staff, who trust us to communicate with their customers.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92512\u0026key=user_uploads/416691/9eeaaa4c-ba17-4927-82b9-230c362a3684)\n\n### **Who We're Looking For**\n\nYou might be a fit if you:\n\n* Want to build **cutting-edge AI features** and work on SOTA everything\n* Are **disillusioned by AI slop** products and want to solve real-world problems\n* Want **excessive ownership** of critical systems and infrastructure\n* Have a **high bar of excellence** and want to work with people who match your energy\n\nIf you’re curious, please join us in building the future of AI-powered automotive retail operations. We’re a small team, but we punch above our weight and are having a blast doing it.\n\n👉 [www.toma.com/jobs](http://www.toma.com/jobs)","slug":"O48-toma-ai-platform-for-the-2t-automotive-industry","created_at":"2025-07-28T17:47:22.350Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T04:55:51.068Z","total_vote_count":15,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/O48-toma-ai-platform-for-the-2t-automotive-industry","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=92512\u0026key=user_uploads/416691/9eeaaa4c-ba17-4927-82b9-230c362a3684","company":{"id":29377,"name":"Toma","slug":"toma","url":"http://www.toma.com/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/30c720ae0d8e011f3d717a623f88d12d48f2a84c.png","batch":"Winter 2024","industry":"B2B","tags":["Marketing","Customer Support","AI","Automotive","Conversational AI"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/29377"}}