🎤 Full Interview: Alex Regal, Co-founder & CEO @ Regal AI
"These AI agents are a tenth the cost of US-based human agents. They're performing as well. If not everything's perfect, you'll still push to make it perfect—because it's worth it."
Founder Story & Vision
Who they are & what they’re building
Alex Levin is Co-Founder and CEO of Regal AI. He leads the GTM teams and also invests in Startups. Prior to Regal AI, Alex was a product manager at Personal and Thomson Reuters, and then joined Handy (acquired by ANGI in 2018) as an early employee. At Handy and then ANGI, Alex led growth and marketing. Alex is Harvard Graduate who grew up in new york.
Despite the industry trend of deflecting voice calls due to high operational costs, Alex realized voice led to better customer engagement and higher LTV. When legacy vendors dismissed his vision, he co-founded Regal AI to build next-gen voice AI agents for enterprises—believing voice was not dead, but undervalued.
Why now & what’s the big bet
The cost-efficiency and growing quality of voice AI has shifted the narrative from deflection to full-on replacement. For the first time in history, AI agents are both cheaper and perform as well (or better) than humans in voice-based tasks. Alex’s bet? Within 3–10 years, 90% of enterprise calls will be handled by AI, not people. Regal’s goal is to power that transformation.
🧩 Real-World Use Cases
Healthcare (Medicare/Medicaid): Regal AI agents handle complex, compliance-heavy conversations with elderly patients—achieving equal or better CSAT than human agents.
Hospitality & Local Services: AI agents manage scheduling/rescheduling, improving operational efficiency across time zones and languages.
Insurance & Lending: From sales to payment collection, Regal’s AI agents work across customer touchpoints, reducing costs while improving engagement.
What you’ll learn:
How Alex navigated enterprise resistance to voice and built trust in AI
A framework for launching high-ROI AI pilots in complex orgs
Real tactics for increasing LTV via voice engagement
Lessons on winning enterprise customers as a startup
How Regal is solving the problem of low-quality contact center automation
Some Takeaways:
Don’t test AI on your smallest use case—test 1% of your biggest for real ROI
Retention > Growth: Investors care more about stickiness than pure topline
Voice isn’t dead—AI is bringing it back, cheaper and smarter
Regal acts like a tech-powered BPO—removing integration and orchestration friction
If you're not already testing voice AI in core ops, you're falling behind
In this episode, we cover:
00:00 – Alex’s journey from Angie to launching Regal AI
04:36 – Legal & compliance concerns with AI agents
07:01 – How Regal scales from scrappy MVPs to enterprise-grade deployments
13:06 – Why enterprises still underestimate the voice channel
22:38 – Fundraising insights: what convinced investors to go all-in
25:49 – The psychology of customer comfort with AI
38:29 – Where AI voice agents are headed in the next 5–10 years
Referenced in the Episode:
TCPA & FCC Compliance Rules
Angie (formerly Angie's List)
HIPAA, SOC 2 Frameworks
Roman Health, AAA Insurance, Kin, Ethos
Google Maps API, RPA vs API logic
Wall Street Journal coverage of Regal
Prompt Engineering as a Future Role
Find Case Studies of all other episodes here.
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