Eloquent AI, a pioneering company that enables financial institutions to fully automate and manage their customer service functions using artificial intelligence, has successfully closed a $7.4 million seed funding round led by U.S.-based Foundation Capital. The round was oversubscribed within just three days, attracting investor demand at 12 times the initial target.
Founded by Tuğçe Bulut in her second entrepreneurial venture alongside Dr. Aldo Lipani, a professor of machine learning, Eloquent AI has developed the world’s first AI Operator purpose-built for regulated financial workflows. Unlike chatbots or FAQ-limited AI tools, the Operator automates mission-critical processes such as fraud investigations, dispute resolution, and KYC/AML checks, all while ensuring auditability and compliance.
Highlighting the industry’s challenges, Tuğçe Bulut stated: “The cliché that financial institutions are lagging in technology adoption is highly exaggerated. These institutions are often constrained by compliance requirements and operational backlogs. The will to innovate has always been there, but the right tool didn’t exist until now.”
Merve Zabcı, Managing Partner at Logo Ventures, added: “Eloquent AI allows financial institutions to redesign regulated customer services without lengthy integrations. This marks a true inflection point. It goes far beyond a typical AI assistant, delivering reliable automation at scale.”
Eloquent’s Operator is powered by Oratio, its proprietary multimodal large language model. Using browser control and computer vision, the Operator learns workflows directly from human agents across internal systems—without requiring APIs, engineering, or code. With Eloquent Operating Procedures (EOPs), customer service teams can train the Operator in natural language or through on-screen demonstration, enabling it to autonomously execute tasks as if it were a human employee.
This approach has proven highly effective: up to 96% of customer service operations can now be automated, including customer onboarding, account opening, lending services, fraud reviews, sanctions monitoring, and dispute resolution. The company is also backed by leading innovators in financial services such as Cleo, Gusto, Mercury, OakNorth Bank, Rho, and Vouch.
Nico Stainfeld, Partner at Foundation Capital, emphasized: “Eloquent AI’s Operators act like human APIs. They watch, learn, and execute critical workflows with precision and compliance. This is a game-changing development for financial institutions drowning in manual processes.”
Jonathan Bresler, Managing Partner at EJF Ventures, commented: “Eloquent AI is redefining enterprise automation. It empowers customer service teams to lead transformation while giving technical teams full control. This level of flexibility and reliability is unprecedented in AI-driven financial operations.”
The fresh funding will be used to expand Eloquent’s engineering team in San Francisco and enhance the Operator’s capabilities in areas such as fraud prevention, payments, lending, and customer acquisition.
Kurt Schmidt, Managing Director at Duke Capital Partners, noted: “We are proud to invest in Eloquent AI, a trusted partner for banks and insurers. Their compliance-first, no-code AI Operators set a new benchmark for enterprise automation in regulated industries.”
