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Relay raises $36 million to bring AI to smart radios for frontline workers
Relay raised $36M led by International Paper, pushing its total funding past $90M to stop "signal evaporation"-the loss of operational data spoken over radios.
Relay Inc. has raised $36 million in a funding round led by International Paper Co., bringing the company's total capital to over $90 million. The investment signals growing demand for technology that stops operational data from vanishing the moment a radio transmission ends.
Cerity Partners Ventures and existing investor G2 Ventures also participated in the round. Relay builds cloud-connected smart radios and AI software designed for frontline workers in industries where phones and laptops are impractical.
Turning voice into structured data
Relay's core problem is what CEO Chris Chuang calls "signal evaporation" - the routine loss of valuable information spoken over two-way radios. Workers on factory floors, construction sites, and hotel properties rarely have time to stop and log every equipment fault or safety observation into a system. The information exists for seconds, then disappears.
The company's AI captures those voice communications in real time and converts them into structured data. The system is trained on industry-specific jargon. It can identify equipment failures from spoken descriptions and automatically generate work orders that feed into existing operational workflows. Chuang said the technology addresses "signal evaporation, where valuable operational data spoken over radios is lost because workers are too busy to log it manually."
Translation built into the channel
Relay also offers TeamTranslate, a feature that performs real-time voice translation across more than 30 languages. For hospitality teams, event staff, and construction crews with multilingual workforces, the tool removes the friction of passing a device back and forth or pulling in a bilingual colleague for routine coordination.
The feature runs on the same radio channel, so a supervisor speaking English can be heard in Spanish by one group and Polish by another, without switching devices or applications. This has practical implications for safety briefings, shift handovers, and emergency instructions where speed matters more than precision grammar.
Where the money goes
Relay plans to direct the new capital toward accelerating AI development, improving worker safety systems, and expanding into industrial and hospitality sectors. International Paper, a major Relay customer, led the round after seeing the technology's effect on shift transitions and frontline-to-operations connectivity.
The investment follows a pattern of large industrial operators placing direct bets on the software they already use, rather than waiting for venture-backed startups to mature on someone else's balance sheet. For operations leaders, the takeaway is that AI-powered voice tools are moving from pilot programs to budget-line items backed by corporate venture arms.
Why this matters for operations, HR, and hospitality leaders
For operations directors and construction managers, the funding round validates a practical use case: capturing unstructured radio chatter and turning it into searchable, actionable records without asking frontline workers to change how they communicate. For HR and hospitality leaders, the translation feature addresses a concrete pain point - coordinating multilingual teams during time-sensitive situations like shift changes, safety incidents, or large event setups. The technology does not replace radios. It makes what already happens on them retrievable, translatable, and useful beyond the moment someone keys the mic.