Boardy, a professional networking startup driven by AI voice technology, announced Thursday the closing of a $3 million pre-seed round.

The company was co-founded by its CEO Andrew D’Souza and brothers Ankur Boyed and Abhinav Boyed. They had this idea in March, started building it throughout the summer, and just officially launched it this month.

How it works is simple: a user gives their number to Boardy.ai and receives a phone call from an AI voice assistant named, of course, Boardy. The person chats with Boardy and tells the AI ​​what they are working on. Boardy then checks to see if anyone in the Boardy network could help you. The network that Boardy knows — which D’Souza says currently numbers a few thousand people — started with D’Souza’s own network of investors, founders and creators, and has grown since then. It’s primarily used for people looking to meet customers and investors, and has also helped people participate in accelerator programs as well as co-founder matching, he said.

“If Boardy has spoken with someone who he thinks would make a good connection based on your experience and whether you two would actually get along, he will try to facilitate a double opt-in introduction “, explained D’Souza. . If the introduction is accepted, Boardy introduces both parties via email. “You can call Boardy back every week to work on a new introduction for you.”

D’Souza said they started the company because of the loneliness that social media had made people. In fact, studies now show that America in particular is in the midst of a loneliness epidemic, one that began even before the pandemic. D’Souza said there was a fear that AI would exacerbate the loneliness epidemic, eliminating jobs and supplanting what makes people feel human. While other startups create AI-generated companions, sometimes with disturbing results, Boardy uses AI to facilitate human connections.

“We built Boardy to create a better future, where AI makes us more connected to each other and where humans and AI collaborate to solve humanity’s toughest problems,” said D’Souza .

Prior to that, D’Souza co-founded and led e-commerce company Clearco. After nearly a decade at Clearco, he said the company had grown to such a size that it needed a more experienced capital markets expert to lead the business. He voluntarily decided to leave as they brought in a new CEO, while D’Souza embarked on a new path.

Fundraising for Boardy was easy because the round was mostly made up of investors D’Souza met through Clearco. HF0 was the largest investor in the round, with others including 8VC, Precursor, Afore, FJ Labs and NextView.

“In the future, I hope to meet more of my investors through Boardy,” he said.

Boardy will use the new capital to continue developing and training the AI, hoping to make it smarter and more empathetic. The team is also working to expand Boardy’s personal network to connect users with more people.

There aren’t many competitors for Boardy at the moment, although there are companies growing in the AI ​​social media space, such as Butterflies and SocialAI. There are, however, AI companies to help consumers create agents and facilitate consumer interactions and appointment scheduling. D’Souza hopes Boardy is different, saying the AI ​​agent “works for itself.”

“You can ask Baordy for help and he will do his best to help you, but not at the expense of other people in his network,” he continued. “You can’t tell Boardy what to do, which makes him more trustworthy.”