Sophiie AI Raises AUD $5 Million Seed Round and Launches AI Operating System for Trades and Service Businesses

Australian AI company raises to accelerate international expansion as thousands of trades businesses adopt its new AI-powered operating platform

GOLD COAST, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA, August 15, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Sophiie AI, the Australian technology company building an AI operating system for trades and service businesses, has raised A$5 million in seed funding as it launches a major new version of its platform and accelerates international expansion.
The round, raised at a A$30 million valuation, includes investment from Archangel Ventures, Admiralty Capital Group, Antler, Gandel Invest and Aussie Angels.
The new funding comes during a period of rapid growth for Sophiie, which is growing approximately 10–15% month-on-month and now serves thousands of businesses across Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Sophiie will use the capital to accelerate product development, grow its team, deepen its presence across its existing markets and expand into the United States later this year.

Sophiie was created to solve one of the most persistent problems facing trades and service businesses: the enormous amount of time owners and their teams lose to administration.
For high-volume maintenance trades such as plumbing, electrical and HVAC, the problem is particularly acute. A single business can receive dozens or even hundreds of customer enquiries while simultaneously coordinating tradies, schedules, jobs, quotes, invoices and customer communication throughout the day.
Business owners can spend as much as 16 hours every week on administrative work – time that could otherwise be spent serving customers, managing teams and growing their businesses.
Sophiie set out to change that.
The company has now launched a major new version of its platform, evolving from an AI receptionist into a comprehensive AI operating system for trades and service businesses.
Rather than providing businesses with another piece of software they need to manage, Sophiie is designed to actively run the workflows behind their operations.
From the moment a customer calls or submits an enquiry, Sophiie can respond, qualify the customer, book and schedule work, coordinate jobs, communicate with customers, generate quotes, manage follow-ups and support invoicing – all through one intelligent operating layer.
Its conversational AI can communicate naturally with customers across phone and digital channels while understanding the context of each customer, job and interaction.
The ambition is to give trades businesses an AI-powered operating system capable of helping manage the entire working day.
Jacob Banks, Co-Founder and CEO of Sophiie, said:
“Trades businesses don’t have an admin problem because they’re badly run. They have an admin problem because they’re incredibly busy. A plumber, electrician or HVAC business might have dozens of jobs moving at once, tradies in the field and customers constantly calling, texting and asking for updates.”
“We started Sophiie to take that burden away. With our new platform, we’re going much further. We’re building an AI operating system that can sit at the centre of a service business and help manage the journey from the first customer enquiry through to getting the job done and getting paid.”
“This $5 million round gives us the capital to take what we’ve built in Australia and scale it internationally. We already have thousands of businesses using Sophiie across Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and we’re seeing 10 to 15 per cent growth month-on-month. With our expansion into the U.S. planned for later this year, we believe there is an enormous opportunity to build the global AI operating system for trades.”
Amanda Andriano, Founding Partner and Investment Lead for Sophiie AI at Admiralty Capital Group, said:
"From our earliest conversations, it was clear Jacob, Luke and Juan weren't simply building another AI application. They had a deep understanding of one of the largest and most underserved sectors of the market, and a clear vision for how artificial intelligence could fundamentally transform the way trades and service businesses operate.
"As investors, we look for exceptional founders solving meaningful problems in large markets. What has reinforced our conviction since investing is the quality of execution. The team has consistently delivered against ambitious milestones, expanded internationally and built a product that customers are embedding into the core of their businesses. This capital raise is an important milestone, but more importantly it reflects the discipline and execution the founders have demonstrated since day one."

Sophiie was founded by Jacob Banks, Luke Kelleher and Juan Castro, who saw firsthand how much revenue and productivity service businesses lose because of fragmented systems and relentless administrative work.
Banks previously built an online marketplace featuring more than 35,000 trades businesses, where he saw operators struggle to answer every enquiry, follow up leads and keep customers informed while completing work in the field.
Kelleher, the founder of digital agency 2Busy Solutions, experienced the same problem from another direction: generating high-quality leads for trades businesses, only for opportunities to disappear when busy operators couldn’t answer the phone or follow up quickly enough.
Together with Castro’s software engineering expertise, the founders built Sophiie around a simple idea: what if the software did the admin, rather than creating more of it?
That idea has evolved into a platform designed specifically around the operational complexity of high-volume service businesses.
Sophiie’s latest platform brings customer communication, scheduling, job management and administrative workflows into an AI-native operating system designed to work continuously alongside owners, office teams and tradies in the field.
Instead of requiring someone to manually move information between disconnected systems, Sophiie is designed to understand what is happening across the business and take action.

The A$5 million seed round will support Sophiie’s next stage of international growth, with an immediate focus on deepening its presence in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, before expanding into the United States later this year.
The opportunity extends well beyond replacing traditional reception or administrative functions.
Sophiie’s vision is for AI to become a new operational layer for service businesses – helping owners manage increasing volumes of customers and jobs without requiring administration and overheads to grow at the same rate.
For an industry where growth has traditionally meant more phone calls, more paperwork, more coordination and more administrative staff, Sophiie believes AI can fundamentally change the economics of scaling a service business.

Jacob Banks
Sophiie AI
+61 439 810 207
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