“My life has prepared me for this moment,” Ben Sanders said when asked why he launched emergency response startup Hyper. The company announced on Monday its $6.3 million seed round led by ENIAC ventures and an official emergence from stealth.
As a child, he wanted to be a police officer, so he sewed his mother yellow stripes into Navy sweatpants. He wore it in the rain hat of an officer all year round. When he grew up, he worked at the intersection of technology and government, and once ran for the federal government.
About a year ago, he read a news article about his hometown trying to use AI to reduce waiting times for emergency services. Sanders, who once launched AI voice for a drive-thru restaurant, suddenly had an idea. He didn't think the AI was ready to support 911 calls, but he felt this was a space for innovation, especially after realising that most calls made on the emergency line were not considered emergency calls at all.
Sanders collaborated with his friend Damien McCabe. The duo officially launched Hyper on Monday, offering an AI voice company that can handle roughly 911 calls. CEO Sanders said the product is about dealing with non-urgent calls that take time away from the important calls that determine the “difference between life and death.” McCabe is the company's CPO.
At this point, even if a person tries to call a local police station, you can still find the number of 10 digits that route to the same people who receive 911 calls the most frequently.
“Imagine talking to someone for eight minutes about a neighbor's dog's barking. Because of that noise complaints, just late answer the next call and hear the trembling voice of a five-year-old, who has just collapsed on the floor,” Sanders said.
He also receives hyper-answer questions, text links, forwarding, phone forwarding, and even emergency police reports. “The Hypers always function safely, so if you have a call outside the approved range, or if the emergency sounds a little urgent, you can automatically escalate them to a human expert just in case.”
TechCrunch Events
San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025
Sanders described the fundraising process as “fascinating, man, fast.” It took him less than two months to lift the entire round. This was eventually oversubscribed and included subsequent capital. Ripple Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures, Tusk Venture Partners and K5 Global also participated in the round. Sanders said he met connections at Eniac Venture through mutual acquaintances.
Hyper hopes to use fresh capitals to help expand across the country, integrate it into existing 911 systems, hire heads of engineering, and build the next product. There are some competition in this area, like Aurelian. This also sorts non-urgent calls. Sanders said that changing the hyper with the others is focusing on the 911.
“We train models on actual 911 calls with local agents,” he said. “We support more languages, and we already live with many centres, which is a major operational hurdle for government and public safety.”
Sanders hopes that Hyper can take away at least some of the stress associated with being the 911 caller. He says most call centers are currently struggling to hire due to a lack of staff.
“It's a very tough job. I don't even know if I can,” Sanders said. “But I know how to build useful technology. To help call takers and dispatchers, the unhonored heroes. Tackling non-urgent calls and noise reduces the burden, and in doing so, it helps to save lives in the end.”