Company combines modern voice AI with decades of banking and AI technology expertise to enhance customer experience and accelerate sales and collections in regulated industries; Previously announced Series A funding fuels U.S. expansion

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Acclaim, the developer of the AI-powered CX platform built for enterprises in regulated industries, today announced its formal U.S. market entry. The launch is supported by the appointment of industry veteran Fred Fontes as CEO and a previously announced $34 million Series A funding round led by Ratmir Timashev, co-founder of Veeam and Acclaim advisor. Formerly known as Aiphoria, Acclaim has designed enterprise-grade, voice-first AI agents to rehumanize customer service, making the end-user experience more seamless and impactful, while improving the productivity and satisfaction of human agents.

“Everyone is racing to deploy AI agents, yet no customer wakes up hoping to speak with a robot,” said Timashev. “I’m invested in Acclaim because it closes that gap. Acclaim delights customers, accelerates sales, and safeguards compliance from day one. That’s a rare and winning combination.”

Acclaim’s AI agent platform is purpose-built for enterprises in regulated industries, such as banking, insurance and healthcare. Acclaim is fully U.S., UK and EU AI regulation-ready, allowing CTOs, CIOs and AI leaders to deploy agents that can operate within strict rules, maintain auditability, ensure compliance and meet data sovereignty requirements.

Fontes, formerly Chief Customer Officer at Replicant, brings deep operational experience at the intersection of customer operations and applied AI to the CEO role. His background includes leading global teams at Replicant and Aera (a decision intelligence platform) and experience advising Fortune 500 leaders on AI transformations at McKinsey & Company.

“The founding team at Acclaim has built a proven platform capable of serving 50M+ users across some of the most demanding environments in financial services,” said Fontes. “Today, we take the next step in our company’s evolution, expanding to the U.S. Acclaim is poised to fill the massive market need for automating customer experience with empathy via conversational AI agents at scale.”

Customer successes prove Acclaim’s technology and compliance leadership

The opportunity for voice-first AI agents is significant and growing fast. IDC forecasts the worldwide conversational AI market will exceed $31.9B by 2028, while Business Research Insights reports that the virtual receptionist market, a specific segment of conversational AI, could surpass $10.85B by 2035.

Acclaim is well-positioned to meet this demand. Its platform is designed for customer-facing workflows in regulated businesses where accuracy, reliability and control matter most. Unlike providers that just focus on conversation, Acclaim delivers end-to-end agentic workflows that solve full business problems; for example: prioritizing outreach, orchestrating communication sequences, and completing actions like resolving issues, securing commitments, and advancing transactions.

LSE-listed TBC Group partnered with Acclaim, working alongside TBC's in-house AI team to bring AI-powered automation to customer communications. By the end of 2025, TBC Uzbekistan—the Group's digital banking arm with 23M+ registered users—was handling 90 percent of early-stage delinquency calls and 100K monthly sales interactions through AI agents.

Nika Kurdiani, CEO of TBC Uzbekistan, commented: “We were pleased to work with Acclaim to support the development of our foundational AI stack. Alongside our internal team, Acclaim’s work assisted in building our Uzbek-language LLMs and Speech Tech, in what is one of Central Asia’s most ambitious AI projects. This technology powers AI agents across sales and collections that have driven efficiency gains and delivered an improved customer experience, and also underpins Lola, our proprietary AI banking assistant, which we launched in Friends and Family mode late last year and which is now being rolled out to all customers.”

Acclaim’s AI CX platform reduces costs, improves efficiency, and helps organizations navigate regulatory complexity. In regulated industries—beyond customer experience challenges—compliance violations, inconsistent disclosures, data leakage, and systems that break under real call volumes create significant financial and reputational risk.

Acclaim’s platform addresses these risks with built-in guardrails that prevent off-script language, deliver required notices, and maintain auditable interaction trails. Its proprietary GOAL (Goal-Oriented Agent Logic) framework ensures AI agents don’t just converse—they execute defined workflows that drive business outcomes under full enterprise control, including on-premise or private cloud deployment when required for security, compliance and data residency.

New EMEA & LATAM executives to help drive regional growth

In addition to its U.S. market entry, Acclaim is increasing its investment in EMEA by appointing Paul Thomas, a contact center solutions expert, as SVP, EMEA, and Chris Gould, Executive Partner at Gartner, as CISO. Formerly NiCE Ltd’s SVP and GM, Thomas will build on existing regional traction to accelerate broader expansion and strengthen the company’s European partner ecosystem. Gould, former partner at EY and PWC, brings nearly 40 years’ cybersecurity industry experience.

“What impressed me immediately is the engineering discipline behind the founders and the broader technical team at Acclaim,” said Thomas. “This isn’t stitched-together automation. Acclaim’s production-grade voice AI is built to operate under real compliance constraints and make a real impact on CX programs. This is critical as regional organizations face immense pressure to comply with the EU AI Act and other emerging regulations.”

In LATAM, Acclaim has appointed Fernando Bertolla as VP, LATAM. Formerly a Salesforce VP with a background in customer experience and financial services, Bertolla will accelerate Acclaim’s client and partner relationships in one of the fastest growing fintech regions in the world. Partnerships with innovators like Banco Plata, a technology-first digital bank, have demonstrated early success for Acclaim in the region.

“Building a technology-first bank means solving hard engineering problems every day and constantly deciding which technologies are actually worth betting on. We believe that AI creates remarkable opportunities — but in a noisy sector, partners with real, specialized expertise matter more than ever,” said Andrey Shelekhin, CTO of Banco Plata. “Engaging with Acclaim's engineers has given us access to unique, deep knowledge in real-time voice processing and voice agent development that's hard to find elsewhere."

To learn more about how Acclaim is transforming and safeguarding customer service, please visit www.acclaim.ai.

About Acclaim

Acclaim (formerly Aiphoria) is a voice-first AI customer experience (CX) platform purpose-built for regulated industries including banking, fintech, healthcare, and insurance. It enables enterprises to deploy goal-oriented AI agents that resolve service issues, recover payments, support sales, and automate high-volume customer interactions. Acclaim helps organizations delight with human-quality conversations, accelerate revenue-driving interactions, and safeguard their data by maintaining strict compliance across every customer channel—driving more seamless, high-impact experiences for customers while increasing the productivity and satisfaction of human agents. With privacy-first architecture and on-prem or private cloud deployment, enterprises stay fully in control of their AI so that every interaction is secure, compliant, and delivers results that speak for themselves.

Contact:
TouchdownPR for Acclaim
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