This week, Radical Ventures announced our investment in Prepared‘s $80M funding round. Prepared is building an AI-powered emergency response platform that is reinventing how 911 centers handle critical calls.
Emergency response represents one of society’s most critical functions, yet the infrastructure supporting it has remained largely unchanged since the era of landlines. As call volumes continue to rise and staffing struggles to keep pace, 911 centers face an increasingly difficult challenge: maintaining high-quality emergency response with limited resources and antiquated tools.
Prepared is addressing this challenge head-on with a comprehensive AI platform that provides real-time transcription, translation, dispatch assistance, non-emergency triage, and quality assurance analytics. Callers can send photos and video footage directly to 911 centers with the Prepared platform to provide first responders with critical context. Calls received can be in any language and are rapidly translated without waiting for interpreters (reducing resolution time from 15+ minutes to just a couple of minutes). Finally, AI-powered summaries ensure no critical detail is missed during high-stress situations.
Perhaps most importantly, the technology improves emergency call center employee retention in an industry plagued by high turnover and burnout. Deployments are already live in more than 1,000 emergency call centers in the U.S, including those serving Las Vegas, Nashville, and Baltimore.
The company’s long-term vision is to build a near-fully autonomous system that leverages AI to answer and triage calls, dispatch units, and support first responders in real time. AI can eliminate friction and handle routine tasks, allowing human responders to focus on the judgment, instinct, and compassion that define emergency response work.
CEO Michael Chime and his team combine deep domain expertise with exceptional execution speed. Having grown up near Sandy Hook, Michael brings a personal mission to this work that translates into the urgency and thoughtfulness evident in everything Prepared builds. The team’s ability to earn trust and integrate seamlessly into existing workflows has contributed to their success.
As AI continues to mature, some of the most transformative applications will be those that enhance human capability in mission-critical domains rather than entirely replacing human judgment, particularly in what can be a life-or-death situation. Prepared reflects this philosophy, using AI to empower emergency responders while preserving essential human decision-making.
We are excited to support Prepared as the team continues building the future of emergency response, one call at a time.
Read more in Prepared’s announcement.
