avaya
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Avaya
The 25-year-old telecom spinoff that answers the phones for most of the Fortune 100 is betting its second act on hybrid AI-powered customer experience - without asking anyone to rip out what already works.
Callab AI
Callab AI builds AI voice agents that plug directly into the legacy, on-premises phone systems most large call centers still run on. Instead of forcing a cloud migration, its carrier-grade telephony stack connects to hardware like Avaya, Cisco UCM, and Mitel over SIP trunks and automates a large share of inbound calls within about a week. Founded by Tunisian engineers Haithem Kchaou and Chehir Dhaouadi and part of Y Combinator's Spring 2026 batch, the company handles calls in Arabic and its dialects plus several other languages, and serves customers across North America, Europe, and the Middle East.
Søren Abildgaard
Søren Abildgaard is the CEO of KeyShot, the industry-leading 3D visualization and rendering platform used by designers, engineers, and marketers worldwide. A Danish-born engineer-turned-executive, he brings two decades of engineering leadership from Zendesk, Avaya, Contentful, Adobe, Autodesk, and Microsoft to his mission of transforming KeyShot from a photorealistic rendering tool into a full-lifecycle visualization and realization platform. Having served on KeyShot's board since 2023, he stepped into the CEO role on May 1, 2025, backed by GRO Capital, with a sharp focus on AI integration, customer proximity, and strategic clarity.