Australian artificial intelligence startup secures capital to speed up global growth as thousands of trade firms adopt its new AI-driven operations platform
We’re building an AI operating system that can sit at the centre of a service business and help manage the journey from the first customer enquiry through to getting the job done and getting paid.”— Jacob BanksGOLD COAST, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA, August 15, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Sophiie AI, an Australian tech firm creating an AI operating system for trade and service businesses, has secured A$5 million in seed funding while rolling out a significant new platform update and accelerating its international expansion.
The investment round, based on a A$30 million valuation, brings together backing from Archangel Ventures, Admiralty Capital Group, Antler, Gandel Invest, and Aussie Angels.
This new capital arrives during a phase of fast expansion for Sophiie, which is increasing roughly 10–15% month over month and now supports thousands of businesses across Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
Sophiie intends to use the funds to speed up product development, expand its workforce, strengthen its footprint in current markets, and enter the United States later this year.
Sophiie was founded to tackle one of the most stubborn challenges facing trade and service companies: the huge amount of time owners and their crews lose to administrative tasks.
For high‑volume maintenance trades like plumbing, electrical work, and HVAC, the issue is especially severe. A single company may receive dozens or even hundreds of customer inquiries while simultaneously coordinating crews, schedules, jobs, quotes, invoices, and customer communications throughout the day.
Business owners can spend up to 16 hours each week on paperwork – time that could otherwise go toward serving customers, managing teams, and growing their operations.
Sophiie set out to change that.
The company has now launched a major new version of its platform, transforming from an AI receptionist into a comprehensive AI operating system for trade and service businesses.
Rather than giving businesses yet another piece of software to manage, Sophiie is built to actively run the workflows behind their operations.
From the instant a customer calls or submits an inquiry, Sophiie can respond, qualify the lead, book and schedule work, coordinate jobs, communicate with customers, generate quotes, handle follow‑ups, and support invoicing – all through a single intelligent operating layer.
Its conversational AI can interact naturally with customers over phone and digital channels while understanding the context of each customer, job, and interaction.
The goal is to provide trade businesses with an AI‑powered operating system that can help manage the entire working day.
Jacob Banks, Co‑Founder and CEO of Sophiie, said:
“Trades businesses don’t have an admin problem because they’re badly run. They have an admin problem because they’re incredibly busy. A plumber, electrician or HVAC business might have dozens of jobs moving at once, tradies in the field and customers constantly calling, texting and asking for updates.”
“We started Sophiie to take that burden away. With our new platform, we’re going much further. We’re building an AI operating system that can sit at the centre of a service business and help manage the journey from the first customer enquiry through to getting the job done and getting paid.”
“This $5 million round gives us the capital to take what we’ve built in Australia and scale it internationally. We already have thousands of businesses using Sophiie across Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and we’re seeing 10 to 15 per cent growth month-on-month. With our expansion into the U.S. planned for later this year, we believe there is an enormous opportunity to build the global AI operating system for trades.”
Amanda Andriano, Founding Partner and Investment Lead for Sophiie AI at Admiralty Capital Group, said:
"From our earliest conversations, it was clear Jacob, Luke and Juan weren't simply building another AI application. They had a deep understanding of one of the largest and most underserved sectors of the market, and a clear vision for how artificial intelligence could fundamentally transform the way trades and service businesses operate.
"As investors, we look for exceptional founders solving meaningful problems in large markets. What has reinforced our conviction since investing is the quality of execution. The team has consistently delivered against ambitious milestones, expanded internationally and built a product that customers are embedding into the core of their businesses. This capital raise is an important milestone, but more importantly it reflects the discipline and execution the founders have demonstrated since day one."
Sophiie was founded by Jacob Banks, Luke Kelleher, and Juan Castro, who witnessed firsthand how much revenue and productivity service companies lose because of fragmented systems and relentless administrative work.
Banks previously built an online marketplace featuring more than 35,000 trade businesses, where he saw operators struggle to answer every inquiry, follow up on leads, and keep customers informed while completing work in the field.
Kelleher, the founder of digital agency 2Busy Solutions, encountered the same problem from a different angle: generating high‑quality leads for trade businesses, only for opportunities to vanish when busy operators couldn’t answer the phone or follow up quickly enough.
Together with Castro’s software engineering expertise, the founders built Sophiie around a straightforward concept: what if the software handled the admin instead of creating more of it?
That concept has evolved into a platform designed specifically around the operational complexity of high‑volume service businesses.
Sophiie’s latest platform brings customer communication, scheduling, job management, and administrative workflows into an AI‑native operating system built to work continuously alongside owners, office teams, and tradies in the field.
Instead of requiring someone to manually move data between disconnected systems, Sophiie is designed to understand what is happening across the business and take action.
The A$5 million seed round will fuel Sophiie’s next phase of international growth, with an immediate focus on deepening its presence in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, followed by expansion into the United States later this year.
The opportunity extends well beyond replacing traditional reception or administrative functions.
Sophiie’s vision is for AI to become a new operational layer for service businesses – helping owners manage growing volumes of customers and jobs without requiring administration and overheads to increase at the same rate.
For an industry where growth has traditionally meant more phone calls, more paperwork, more coordination, and more administrative staff, Sophiie believes AI can fundamentally reshape the economics of scaling a service business.
Jacob Banks
Sophiie AI
+61 439 810 207
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