Sydney startup Chime Labs has raised $900,000 AUD in pre-Seed funding to help tradies manage their workload using AI.
The round was led by 500 Global, supported by angel investors.
Former Googlers Alexis Griveau and Mathew Pretel founded the AI-powered receptionist service in 2025 to support trades and service businesses. They’ve kicked off with an AI receptionist that answers calls 24/7, qualifies leads and books jobs directly the calendar.
The capital will be used to expand the product offerings to make Chime Labs a one-stop shop for Australian trades and services businesses, as well as bolstering the headcount.
Griveau said the idea for Chime Labs came about as a result of witnessing family members and friends struggling when running their service-led business, adding that a single missed call could cost them up to $12,000 a month in lost revenue.
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“We saw firsthand how the administrative burden of paperwork and calls led to unpaid invoices and missed jobs as well as missed time with family due to having to work overtime at night and on weekends to catch up on the things missed during the week,” he said.
“We started to dig into if managing administrative tasks was a general source of struggle for tradies and soon learnt how woefully underserved the industry was.
“We conducted some research that highlighted three solutions that tradespeople often implemented to reduce the administrative burden. This included leveraging friends and family for help, employing an offshore solution or juggling it themselves in between jobs, none of which provided a stable long-term solution which highlighted a gap in the market.”
Griveau, the CEO, said their goal is to support our tradies with the administrative overload often associated with running a service-based business.
“Feedback from current customers on our AI receptionist has been really positive to date,” he said.
“This funding will help us build an expanded AI solution to help with quoting, invoicing and lead generation for tradies, something we’ve had requests for from current clients.”
