HappyRobot

Cofounder & CEO @HappyRobot (Y Combinator S23) Building the AI workforce for the real economy

HappyRobot builds an AI agent platform that automates the phone calls, emails, and paperwork that keep operations-heavy industries running. The company started by deploying a single voice agent inside a US freight broker two years ago and has since expanded into a full orchestration layer for enterprises across logistics, energy, telecoms, and insurance. This launch marks a $150 million Series C at a $1.2 billion valuation, with the platform now serving more than 150 enterprise customers including DHL, Kuehne + Nagel, Naturgy, Repsol, and Uber, plus eight of the top ten freight brokers and two of the top three ocean carriers . The round was led by Prysm Capital and co-led by Eurazeo, with Bankinter, Kfund, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Orange, and T Capital (Deutsche Telekom's venture arm) among the investors, alongside existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, Base10 Partners, and Y Combinator. HappyRobot was founded in San Francisco in 2022 by Pablo Palafox, his brother Javi Palafox, and their childhood friend Luis Paarup, who serve as CEO, COO, and CTO , and went through Y Combinator's S23 batch. Pablo Palafox previously completed a PhD in AI at the Technical University of Munich. The launch video, a mock evening news broadcast reporting on an "uneventful day" where shipments arrived, outages self-resolved, and flights rebooked before passengers noticed, frames the pitch behind the funding. HappyRobot is positioning its agents as the quiet back office of the real economy, and the Series C is aimed at pushing that model deeper into supply chain, energy, and adjacent sectors where the work is still done over phone lines and email threads.

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