# Tyson Chen

> Tyson Chen is the co-founder and co-CEO of Avoca, a New York based startup building AI agents that answer the phones, book jobs, and chase estimates for the trades - HVAC, plumbing, roofing, electrical. He met his co-founder Apurva Shrivastava at an MIT poker night, started out trying to save restaurants from missed calls, then pivoted after a Dallas heating-and-air company showed them that one missed call could mean a lost $40,000 install. In April 2026 Avoca raised a $125M+ Series B led by Meritech and General Catalyst at a $1 billion valuation.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & Co-CEO at Avoca
- **Organizations:** Avoca, Nuro, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), MIT
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.S. in Computer Science (machine learning research, generative AI for drug discovery), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- **Known for:** Co-founded and scaled Avoca to a $1 billion valuation in roughly three years, Raised $125M+ Series B (April 2026) led by Meritech and General Catalyst, with Kleiner Perkins and Amplify Partners, Grew Avoca to 800+ service-business customers

## Career timeline

- **MIT** — Studied computer science, worked on generative AI for drug discovery
- **~2 years** — Consultant at BCG in New York, working on AI projects for Fortune 500 companies
- **~3 years** — Product Manager at Nuro, working on autonomous goods delivery
- **2022** — Co-founded Avoca with Apurva Shrivastava
- **2023** — Avoca goes through Y Combinator (Winter 2023 batch); pivots from restaurants to home services after meeting Rescue Air in Texas
- **2024** — Closes seed round; scales to hundreds of service-business customers
- **2026** — Raises $125M+ Series B at a $1B valuation, led by Meritech and General Catalyst

## Achievements

- Co-founded and scaled Avoca to a $1 billion valuation in roughly three years
- Raised $125M+ Series B (April 2026) led by Meritech and General Catalyst, with Kleiner Perkins and Amplify Partners
- Grew Avoca to 800+ service-business customers
- Built one of the most-watched AI voice agent platforms for the trades (HVAC, plumbing, roofing, electrical)

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — Avoca raised $125M+ Series B at a $1B valuation, led by Meritech and General Catalyst.

## Links

- Website: https://avoca.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tysonchen17

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/tyson-chen
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-03