The Austin startup teaching an AI to answer the one thing dealerships keep dropping - the phone.
MIA LABS, INC. - The company's mark, worn by an AI voice agent now fielding calls at more than 350 U.S. car dealerships, day and night.
Mia Labs makes Mia, a voice-first artificial intelligence built to do one job that car dealerships have quietly struggled with for decades: pick up the phone. Every hour a dealership is closed - nights, weekends, holidays - customers still call. They want to book a service appointment, check whether a specific trim is on the lot, or ask when the store opens. Historically those calls hit voicemail, and a meaningful share of them became someone else's sale.
Founded in Austin in 2023 by CEO Brian Hoang and CTO Kelvin Pho, Mia Labs describes its product not as software but as an "AI super employee." Mia answers inbound calls and places outbound ones across a dealership's core departments - reception, sales, and service - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It detects the caller's language automatically, pulls live inventory and appointment data from the systems a dealer already runs, and hands off to a human when a conversation calls for one.
By the company's own count, that has added up. Through 2025, Mia powered more than a million customer conversations, booked over 130,000 sales and service appointments, saved dealerships an estimated 1.5 million staff hours, and helped generate more than $45 million in dealership revenue. In January 2026 the company raised a $20 million Series A, bringing its total funding to roughly $29 million.
Figures reported by Mia Labs covering the 2025 operating year. Independent verification of self-reported metrics is limited.
Mia's customers are franchise automotive dealerships and the larger groups that own them. Named users and groups include Potamkin, LaFontaine, McGovern, Hudson Automotive, Hendrick, Earnhardt, LA Car Guy, Vanguard, Holiday Automotive, and The Tamaroff Group - a mix of single rooftops and multi-store operators across the United States.
The problem they share is structural. A dealership's phone rings constantly, but the people who answer it are also selling cars, writing service tickets, and greeting walk-ins. Calls get missed, put on hold, or routed to a voicemail nobody checks until morning. Staffing a full business development center (BDC) to catch every call is expensive and hard to keep fully covered. Mia is positioned as the layer that answers the overflow - and the after-hours calls no human was ever going to reach.
Illustrative of Mia's stated capabilities; bars are qualitative, not measured benchmarks.
Answers every call 24/7, shares hours and directions, and routes callers - with automatic multi-language detection.
Since 2023Captures and qualifies leads, checks live inventory availability, and schedules test drives via CRM sync.
Since 2024Books service appointments, qualifies needs, and pulls customer vehicle history from scheduling systems.
Since 2024Proactively calls customers for recalls, reminders, and follow-ups through automated campaigns.
Since 2024Sends text follow-ups to recover missed or dropped phone opportunities before they go cold.
Since 2025An announced module to streamline parts requests and inventory checks - slated to debut at NADA 2026.
2026Plenty of companies now sell voice AI. Mia Labs' bet is that a general-purpose assistant won't cut it on a dealership phone, where the difference between an "RO," a "recall," and a "trade appraisal" is the entire conversation. Mia is built as vertical AI - trained and tuned for the specific vocabulary, workflows, and systems of automotive retail rather than adapted from a horizontal chatbot.
The second differentiator is the team. Mia Labs says its people bring more than 100 combined years of automotive experience spanning dealership operations, OEMs, and auto software, paired with engineering backgrounds in AI and fintech. That domain depth shapes what Mia integrates with and how it handles edge cases a generic model would miss.
The third is fit. Rather than asking a dealership to change how it works, Mia plugs into the dealer management system, CRM, and scheduler already in place - so adoption looks less like a migration and more like flipping on the phones.
Mia Labs is a B2B SaaS company. It sells its platform to dealerships and dealer groups and frames its value around outcomes a general manager cares about - revenue captured, appointments booked, and staff hours reclaimed - rather than a per-seat license alone. That framing lands in a market where dealers are actively shopping for AI that pays for itself.
The company sits at the intersection of two crowded categories: automotive retail technology and enterprise voice AI. Its competitive set includes other dealership-focused AI vendors such as Numa, Toma, and Impel, general-purpose voice-AI providers, and the incumbent alternative most dealers still run - human-staffed BDCs and legacy phone-and-CRM stacks. Mia's wager is that a purpose-built, always-on agent wired into the dealer's existing systems beats all three on cost and coverage.
Sold to dealerships & dealer groups; integrates with existing DMS/CRM.
Vertical voice AI for U.S. franchise dealerships.
Plus rivals like Numa, Toma, and Impel.
100+ combined years in automotive retail.
In January 2026, Mia Labs announced a $20 million Series A led by Permanent Capital Ventures, with participation from Norwest and earlier backers Eniac Ventures, Vine Ventures, Analog Ventures, and Logos Fund. Strategic automotive investors joined too, including Yossi Levi of Car Dealership Guy. The round brought total capital raised to roughly $29 million.
Announced Jan 22, 2026.
Across seed and Series A.
With Norwest & earlier backers.
Employees, Austin-based.
Brian Hoang and Kelvin Pho start Mia Labs to build a vertical voice-AI platform for car dealerships.
Mia rolls out reception, sales, service, and outbound capabilities integrated with major DMS and CRM systems.
Mia reaches 350+ franchise rooftops, powering 1M+ conversations, 130K+ appointments, and $45M+ in enabled revenue.
Raises a $20M Series A led by Permanent Capital Ventures and preps the Mia Parts module for NADA 2026.
Speech-to-text and real-time transcription referenced in Mia's voice pipeline.
Uses Microsoft Defender for Cloud to secure its generative-AI infrastructure - featured in a Microsoft customer story.
Built on Python, Flask, React, Next.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, and Docker, per public technographic data.
Mia Labs builds Mia, an AI voice platform that answers and makes phone calls for automotive dealerships across sales, service, reception, and outbound tasks, 24/7.
Mia Labs was founded in 2023 by CEO Brian Hoang and CTO Kelvin Pho, and is headquartered in Austin, Texas.
Mia Labs raised a $20 million Series A in January 2026 led by Permanent Capital Ventures, bringing total funding to roughly $29 million.
More than 350 franchise dealerships across the U.S., including groups such as Potamkin, LaFontaine, McGovern, Hudson Automotive, and Hendrick.
Mia is a vertical, voice-first product built specifically for automotive retail, integrating directly with dealership DMS, CRM, and scheduling systems rather than serving as a general-purpose assistant.
Profile compiled from public sources including Mia Labs, PR Newswire, Built In Austin, CBT News, Auto Remarketing, and Microsoft customer stories. Metrics are self-reported by the company unless otherwise noted. Some figures are approximate.