The ingenious AI idea from Lace AI and two Bulgarians: From a simple call center to AI optimization – to a goldmine

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Published on: July 25, 2026 / Updated on: July 25, 2026 – Author: Konrad Wolfenstein

The ingenious AI idea from Lace AI and two Bulgarians: From a simple call center to AI optimization – to a goldmine – Image: Xpert.Digital

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Artificial intelligence is often associated in the public perception with futuristic visions and highly complex digital worlds. But the true gold mines of digitalization often lie where one least expects them: in the most traditional sectors of the economy. The Bulgarian-American startup Lace AI impressively demonstrates how a seemingly unglamorous industry—the home services and home improvement sector in the USA—can be transformed into a gigantic future market. With a smart AI solution that uncovers missed sales opportunities in simple phone calls, the company is transforming traditional call centers into highly profitable revenue generators. The result? Explosive growth of 1,000 percent in just one year, $19 million in investment funding from Silicon Valley, and a groundbreaking blueprint for combining American financial power with Eastern European engineering expertise. Read below how two former Meta and LogMeIn engineers, after initial setbacks, wrote the success story of their lives and why the so-called old economy has long since become the new field of AI innovation.

When algorithms see more revenue than humans – a wake-up call for the old economy

A Bulgarian-American startup demonstrates how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the traditional but technologically neglected home services industry in the USA, achieving a revenue growth of one thousand percent within a year.

There are industries that are in the spotlight of digitalization, and others that quietly operate despite the enormous sums of money that pass through their hands. The home services industry in the United States belongs to the latter category. HVAC, plumbing, roofing, and renovation are trades that rarely make headlines in technology magazines. And yet, according to market estimates, this sector generates a volume of around 650 billion US dollars annually. It is precisely in this gap between traditional craftsmanship and modern data analytics that a company has positioned itself, rising in a very short time to become one of the most remarkable growth stories in the European-American technology sector: Lace AI.

Two engineers, one blind spot, and the birth of a business idea

Lace AI's founding story doesn't begin in a Silicon Valley coworking space, but rather with the experiences of two Bulgarian engineers who had both worked for renowned technology companies before venturing into self-employment. Boris Valkov, the company's future CEO, had previously worked as an AI engineer at Meta and contributed to the development of PyTorch, the machine learning software library upon which numerous modern AI applications are now built. His co-founder, Stanislav Stoyanov, brought technical experience as a lead architect at LogMeIn, where he scaled audio and video platforms to handle billions of minutes of conversation per month, including for services like GoToMeeting.

Valkov left Meta at the end of 2021 because he was convinced that artificial intelligence was on the verge of unlocking entirely new possibilities in the application layer of the software landscape. His personal history played a surprisingly significant role in this: As a young man, he had worked in his family's grocery store and experienced firsthand how crucial good telephone customer service can be for business success. This early experience with the power of telephone contact later combined with his interest in artificial intelligence and ultimately led to the founding of Lace.

Before developing their product, the two founders interviewed over a hundred companies from various industries to identify the gap where the difference between the current state and what was technologically possible was greatest. It turned out that the home services industry, in particular, had a glaring weakness: roughly ninety percent of its revenue is generated through call center calls, and each of these calls represents a potential customer with high purchase intent. Despite this, companies were losing significant sums of money every month because they lacked any transparency regarding why certain calls weren't converted into orders.

From dusty call center to data-driven revenue machine

The core problem that Lace AI is trying to solve may seem unspectacular at first glance, but its economic impact is enormous. In the home delivery industry, most sales are still made via traditional phone calls. Until now, business managers could, at best, only check individual calls on a sample basis, relying on gut feeling, incomplete spreadsheets, and subjective assessments to understand why a customer hadn't booked. According to Lace AI's own calculations, this resulted in companies losing between fifteen and forty percent of potential revenue, depending on the size and maturity of the business.

The solution developed by Lace AI addresses precisely this blind spot. Instead of only checking a fraction of incoming calls, the software analyzes all calls received by a client company. Call outcomes are automatically classified, and missed sales opportunities are identified. Call center employees receive targeted, real-time coaching to improve their closing rates, while appointments can be booked automatically, for example, through integration with the industry software ServiceTitan. If a lead isn't booked immediately, the system can automatically follow up via callback or SMS. The offering is complemented by an AI-powered customer service representative who is available around the clock, ensuring that no call goes unanswered.

Client companies report impressive results: booking rates of up to 98 percent and net revenue increases of up to 35 percent, without having to hire additional staff. The company's strategic positioning regarding its clients' workforce is noteworthy. Instead of prioritizing the replacement of human workers, as is the case with many AI providers, Lace AI explicitly emphasizes that it aims to make existing teams more efficient, not replace them. This positioning is likely no coincidence, but rather a deliberate response to the widespread fear among small and medium-sized craft businesses of automation and job losses.

Between California and Sofia: The geographical dual nature of a startup

The question of whether Lace AI is a Bulgarian or an American company cannot be definitively answered, as both answers are simultaneously true. Legally and formally, it is a US company headquartered in Mountain View, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. However, the company was founded in 2022 by two Bulgarians, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US parent company operates in Bulgaria under the name Лейс Софтуер ЕООД. This subsidiary generated revenues of approximately 542,000 leva in 2023 and, according to official data, employed more than ten people at its Sofia location.

Sofia has not become a mere outsourcing location for simple tasks, but a genuine research and development center that plays a central role in the company's technological innovation. The founders themselves emphasize that Bulgarian engineers are among the best-trained professionals in the country and boast one of the highest concentrations of experienced software developers in the entire Balkans. This assessment is noteworthy because it breaks a narrative that has long prevailed in Western European perceptions of Eastern European technology hubs: the image of them as inexpensive but less demanding development locations. Lace AI, instead, explicitly positions Sofia as an equal innovation center, not as an extension of its American headquarters.

This dual structure is typical of a growing number of Eastern European technology companies that are formally incorporated in the United States to gain easier access to American venture capital, the world's largest software market, and international customer relationships, while the actual product development remains in Eastern Europe at a more cost-effective, yet highly skilled location. For Bulgaria, this represents significant economic value, even though the company headquarters are formally located elsewhere: highly skilled jobs, tax revenue from the subsidiary, and a boost to the reputation of the domestic technology sector remain in the country, while the capital and market access come from the United States.

Explosive growth as evidence of an underestimated market gap

Lace AI's growth figures read like a textbook example of successful product-market adaptation. Having only begun selling its product at the end of 2023, the company recorded a 1,000 percent increase in annual recurring revenue in 2024. This figure is truly remarkable: within a single year, the recurring revenue of a company that had only just started selling increased tenfold. Such growth rates are rare, even in the superlative-driven startup environment, and explain why the company is now consistently referred to in Bulgarian media as the country's fastest-growing startup.

Lace AI now serves more than one hundred client companies, including well-known names in the American home services industry such as A1 Garage Door Service, Sage Home, and Eco Plumbers. The fact that its target customers include companies with annual revenues between five million and two billion US dollars demonstrates that the product has been designed to be attractive enough for both medium-sized businesses and large, professionally managed service chains to function effectively in both segments. This broad reach is a strategically sound choice, as it allows the company to benefit from both a large number of small and medium-sized trades businesses and a few, but particularly high-revenue, large clients.

Also of interest is the price range that investors highlight as an indicator of customers' willingness to pay: Some customers spend the equivalent of up to ten percent of what they already spend on their sales staff salaries on the software because they recognize the immediate effect on their revenue. This willingness to pay is a strong indication that the revenue increase from the product is not a marketing promise, but a genuinely tangible economic effect that customers themselves can verify.

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Why Bulgaria's AI talents are now conquering the US skilled trades market

Investors with Silicon Valley experience and Bulgarian roots

Lace AI's funding history reflects the company's dual identity and demonstrates how skillfully the founders have combined American venture capital with Eastern European expertise and networking. Since its founding in early 2022, the company has raised a total of nineteen million US dollars in funding. This began with a previously unannounced pre-seed round of five million US dollars, led by Canvas Ventures. In April 2025, a significantly larger seed funding round of fourteen million US dollars followed, led by Bek Ventures, a Luxembourg-based venture capital fund formerly known as Earlybird Ventures Digital East Fund.

The Bulgarian venture capital firm LAUNCHub Ventures and the American investor Horizon VC also participated in the seed round. The composition of the angel investors is particularly striking, as they are all founders of billion-dollar or at least highly successful technology companies: Snowflake co-founder Marcin Zukowski, Vivino founder Heini Zachariassen, and Payhawk co-founder Hristo Borisov. Borisov's involvement is especially noteworthy because his own company, Payhawk, also has Bulgarian roots and is now one of the most successful fintech spin-offs from Eastern Europe. This constellation illustrates a pattern that is becoming increasingly typical for the Bulgarian startup scene: successful first-generation founders invest their capital and experience in the next generation of local entrepreneurs, gradually creating a self-reinforcing ecosystem.

Sandy Kory, managing partner of Horizon VC, succinctly summarized the investment decision, emphasizing that Lace AI's product delivers immediate, tangible benefits to its customers by pinpointing exactly where revenue is being lost and helping teams recapture it without requiring additional staff or marketing expenditures. Mehmet Atici, managing partner of Bek Ventures, also underscored that in the current phase of AI hype, it is crucial to stand out from the noise with a product that delivers immediate and measurable value. With the new capital, Lace AI plans to triple the size of its team in software development, sales, and customer support to meet the enormous demand from the home services industry.

Four failed attempts as the foundation of today's success

What appears to the public as a straightforward path to success was, in reality, a painstaking search process. Boris Valkov openly admits that in the company's first year, the team had to undergo four major strategic shifts before finding the right product-market fit. Valkov portrays this period of intensive iteration not as a weakness, but as a crucial foundation for later success. The process, in which the team repeatedly sought and acted upon rapid feedback, ultimately developed the skills necessary to build a category-leading product for the American home services industry.

This story is instructive from a business perspective because it contradicts a common misconception about disruptive technology companies. It's often assumed that successful startups pursue a clear vision from the outset, which they then implement relentlessly. However, the reality at Lace AI shows that true innovation often emerges from a structured process of repeated failure and adaptation. The ability to quickly identify which approaches don't work and just as quickly test new hypotheses appears to have been more important than an initial brilliant idea.

Why the skilled trades sector is becoming a field for AI innovation

Choosing the home services industry as a target market might seem unglamorous at first glance, but upon closer inspection, it proves to be a strategically astute move. Many AI startups focus on already highly digitized sectors like software development, marketing, or financial services, where competitive pressure is correspondingly high and margins for new entrants are often slim. The home services industry, on the other hand, is characterized by numerous medium-sized family businesses that have traditionally invested little in modern software, yet simultaneously boast substantial revenues and stable, recurring customer relationships.

The decisive structural advantage of this industry lies in the fact that the vast majority of revenue is generated through a single, clearly defined communication channel: the telephone call. Unlike industries with diverse and difficult-to-standardize sales channels, a single technological solution can cover a very large part of the value chain here. This focus on a single, highly standardized process makes it comparatively easy for a specialized AI company to develop a product that works across different client companies without requiring extensive individual customization for each one.

In addition, there is a psychological factor that is crucial for customers' willingness to buy. Craft businesses that have operated for decades with tight margins and fierce competition are naturally skeptical of abstract promises of digitalization. What convinces them is a directly measurable financial effect that translates into concrete, additional orders. Lace AI delivers precisely this immediate, quantifiable benefit by accurately calculating how much revenue is lost due to missed calls and simultaneously showing how this loss can be reduced.

Bulgaria's technology hub in European competition

Lace AI's success is part of a broader trend that has transformed Bulgaria into an increasingly serious location for technology companies in recent years. While the country has traditionally been perceived as a low-cost location for IT services and software outsourcing, it is now seeing a growing number of companies developing independent, high-quality products and striving for international market leadership in their respective niches. Besides Lace AI, the aforementioned fintech company Payhawk is another prominent example of this development.

This development is also of interest to countries like Germany, particularly for companies and consultants involved in international market expansion and digital transformation. Bulgaria is increasingly positioning itself as a location where Western European and American companies can find highly qualified technical talent at comparatively competitive costs, without compromising on professional quality. At the same time, the example of Lace AI demonstrates that Bulgarian founders are increasingly confidently taking the step of orienting their companies globally from the outset, rather than just regionally, by deliberately relocating their formal headquarters to the United States to gain better access to capital and markets.

Risks and open questions of a rapid success story

Despite the justified enthusiasm surrounding Lace AI's growth figures, the risks of such a rapidly expanding company should not be overlooked. A thousand percent growth rate within a single year is impressive, but it also presents enormous organizational challenges. The planned tripling of the workforce in a short period carries the risk that company culture, quality assurance, and internal processes will not be able to keep pace with the growth. Many startups that have grown at a similar rate have subsequently had to undergo painful consolidation phases.

Furthermore, Lace AI's business model is currently heavily concentrated on a single industry in a single country: the American home services market. While this focus has undoubtedly been crucial to its success to date, it also carries a concentration risk. Should macroeconomic conditions in the United States deteriorate, for example, due to a housing crisis or a general decline in consumer spending that would directly impact household renovation and maintenance expenditures, this could negatively affect the demand for Lace AI's client companies' services and, consequently, indirectly, for its own product.

Another aspect concerns competition. The market for AI-powered speech analytics and call center automation is growing rapidly, and it's reasonable to assume that larger, more financially powerful technology companies will also recognize the potential of this niche. Lace AI's current competitive advantage is largely based on its deep industry knowledge of the home services sector and its specific adaptation to its workflows, for example, through integration with industry software like ServiceTitan. Whether this advantage will be sufficient to hold its own in the long term against larger competitors who may be entering the same market with more extensive resources remains an open question.

A model case for the future of cooperation between Eastern Europe and Silicon Valley

Ultimately, Lace AI embodies a model that could shape the coming years: the close integration of American capital markets and sales structures with Eastern European engineering expertise. Instead of operating exclusively in either the United States or Bulgaria, the company has consciously combined the respective strengths of both locations. Its formal headquarters in California opens the door to American venture capital and the world's largest and most lucrative market, while actual product development in Sofia is driven by highly skilled, yet cost-effective, professionals by international standards.

For German and European businesses, which have been grappling for years with the question of how to create their own internationally competitive AI companies, the example of Lace AI provides important food for thought. It demonstrates that technological success is not necessarily tied to the largest and most expensive talent pools, but can also be achieved through a smart choice of niche markets, consistent customer focus, and the skillful combination of different regional advantages. The story of Lace AI is therefore far more than the success story of a single startup. It is a case study of how the geographical logic of the technology sector is increasingly changing in the age of artificial intelligence, and how smaller economies like Bulgaria can play surprisingly significant roles in this process.

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Bulgaria is transforming from an underestimated EU market into a strategic nearshoring hub for European industrial SMEs. With low location costs, EU legal certainty, access to the Eurozone, and strong logistics networks on the Black Sea, the country offers robust alternatives to Asian supply chains.

At the same time, Bulgarian companies also benefit from this growing economic network, which serves as a strong springboard for their own expansion into Germany, Europe and global markets.

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