Now we’re talking: Curious Thing AI wins AI Gamechanger award for Lucy the phone agent

Smartphones are now even smarter thanks to Sydney artificial intelligence (AI) startup Curious Thing AI and its phone agent Lucy.

People still make plenty of calls and in business they’re especially important, but the way we communicate and get messages to each other is constantly evolving.

That’s where Curious Thing AI comes in, and Lucy, the world’s first free AI phone agent.

The dramatic and instant global success of Lucy saw Curious Thing win the AI Gamechanger award at the 2024 Startup Daily Best in Tech Awards.

AI Gamechanger, presented by AWS Startups, is one of five new categories introduced this year. To choose the finalists and winner, the judging panel looked for startups that demonstrated a clear benefit from artificial intelligence to transform workflows, business operations, data analytics and the way we interact.

The other finalists were:

• Marqo AI, which was founded in response to the frustration its founders experienced with the state of online product search. It allows businesses to replace lexical search with an AI-powered alternative called vector search.
• Andromeda Robotics, which is revolutionising healthcare with Abi, a humanoid companion robot to address critical needs in both aged-care and children’s hospitals.
• Consultmed, which set out to axe the fax connecting patients, care providers, and specialists with hospital networks to deliver tracked digital referrals, triage, and AI-backed digital advice and guidance. 

Curious Thing has been shaking up the way businesses communicate with their customers for the past six years as one of Australia’s first voice AI startups, processing more than 3 million calls annually for both government departments and businesses.

During the pandemic, the startup partnered with the South Western Sydney Local Health district to make more than 1.5 million calls, in a week, as authorities raced to get important and accurate information out to people. 

Then in 2024, Curious Thing pivoted to a bigger mission with its star product, Lucy, and the goal is to replace voicemail with AI for personal, professional or business giving everyone an AI phone agent to handle missed calls.

Lucy has launched in Australia, the US, UK and Canada.

Co-founder and CEO Sam Zheng said their mission is to end voicemail and make smart voice AI technology accessible to everyone.

“Our Lucy AI Phone Agent is the only AI phone agent that is completely free. We truly believe that Lucy is the beginning of the end for voicemail,” he said.

Voicemail has remained largely unchanged for 45 years and in Australia, a billion voicemails are left each year. More than 50% are never heard. And to put the size of the problem in perspective, in the US it’s 10 billion voicemails annually, resulting in 20 million hours of wasted time.

After accepting the award, Zheng said “means a lot” both personally and for the Curious Thing team.

“Being recognised as one of the leaders in this domain is really a huge and recognition for the all of the hard work – the blood and tears – we have invested into this whole thing and then, a reconfirmation of us of our mission to make the world a better place,” he said.

“By offering Lucy for free, we eliminate the barriers that have kept small businesses and individuals from using better communication tools. Lucy is completely self-service, allowing businesses and individuals to set it up on their mobile device in under two minutes, without needing technical support.”

Lucy isn’t the only AI product offered by Curious Thing AI. They’ve also built other AI phone agents for inbound and outbound conversations, across use cases like enquiry handling, lead qualification, and more, powered by ChatGPT and other large language models.

View the full winner’s list from the 2024 Startup Daily Best in Tech Awards here.

Watch the highlights from the awards below:

This article is brought to you by Startup Daily, with thanks to AWS Startups.