911 centers tap AI to handle non-emergency calls

What started as an appointment booking bot for hair salons is now handling 911 dispatch calls.

When Aurelian founder Max Keenan was told by a salon owner that she had waited 45 minutes on hold with the city’s non-emergency line over school traffic blocking her lot, he looked into municipal call routing. What he found was surprising: non-emergency complaints and life-or-death 911 emergencies are frequently answered by the exact same dispatchers.

Aurelian pivoted on the spot. On Wednesday, the startup announced a $14 million Series A round led by NEA to deploy AI voice agents into municipal call centers.

Sorting noise complaints from real crises

Emergency dispatch is consistently ranked among the top ten jobs for turnover in the United States. In some districts, dispatchers regularly work grueling 12- to 16-hour shifts.

Keenan’s goal is straightforward: take repetitive, non-urgent calls off their plates so dispatchers can actually take a break.

Aurelian handles calls for noise violations, parking issues, and stolen wallets. The AI collects details and drafts a police report or routes the task for follow-up without rolling a car. If the system detects an actual life safety crisis, it transfers the caller to a human immediately.

Since launching in May 2024, the assistant has been deployed across more than a dozen centers, including Snohomish County in Washington, Chattanooga in Tennessee, and Kalamazoo in Michigan. According to NEA, Aurelian is currently the only startup answering thousands of live dispatch calls every single day, ahead of rivals like Hyper and Prepared.

Why it matters

We think Aurelian found the rarest kind of enterprise wedge: an AI tool that workers actively want.

Dispatch centers are suffering from catastrophic staffing shortages. As NEA pointed out, this agent does not replace a salaried employee; it fills an empty chair that cities simply cannot hire for. Freeing up human dispatchers from a 45-minute parking complaint means faster response times when a real 911 call rings in.

That said, the stakes could not be higher. In public safety dispatch, the boundary between non-urgent and life-threatening is dangerously thin. A noise complaint can turn violent in seconds, and an AI that misclassifies panic could face catastrophic legal and public backlash. Aurelian's entire future hinges on whether its transfer failsafe remains flawless under real-world pressure.