Flai raises $27M led by Base10 Partners to automate car dealership operations. What started with automating dealership communications has become something much bigger. Today, Flai is increasingly doing the operational work behind them. Flai started Flai to fix a simple but expensive problem: dealerships were losing customers because they couldn't answer every call or follow up consistently. Over the last year, Flai has grown more than 20x and now works with hundreds of dealerships, including more than 20% of the top 50 dealer groups in the country. Across service and sales, Flai helps dealerships answer customers, schedule visits, run outbound campaigns, and re-engage customers. Today, Flai schedules more than 50,000 appointments every month. As Flai has gone deeper into dealership operations, Flai has also proven its initial thesis, that the opportunity is much larger than communication. Flai is excited to announce that Flai has raised a $27 million Series A led by Base10 Partners, with participation from Toyota Ventures, First Round Capital, Y Combinator, The Friedkin Group, and Findlay Automotive Group. This funding will help Flai pursue its long-term vision: automating as much of dealership operations as possible. The conversation is only the beginning. Almost every customer interaction creates work behind it. Customers need to be contacted and scheduled. Missed appointments need to be recovered. Recalls and declined services need to be worked. Systems need to be updated, and sometimes the right person at the dealership needs to get involved. Historically, software has helped dealership employees keep track of this work. Flai believe AI can increasingly do the work itself. Once an agent can understand what needs to happen, communicate with the customer, connect to dealership systems, and take action, it can own increasingly large parts of the workflow. That is already happening at dealerships using Flai today. The conversation is becoming the entry point into execution. Today, Flai is introducing Flai's AI-native Service and Sales CRM. Traditional CRMs create tasks, organize pipelines, and tell people what to do next. But they still depend on someone noticing the opportunity, deciding what to do, and manually moving it forward. Flai is built around AI agents that can understand what's happening across the dealership and actually take action. It can identify missed opportunities, flag operational issues, surface heat cases with suggested resolutions, and automatically report on what needs attention. When action can be automated, Flai takes it: reaching out to customers, handling conversations, scheduling appointments, and updating dealership systems. When human judgment is needed, it brings in the right person with the full context and a recommended next step. The CRM doesn't just tell your team what needs to happen next. It makes it happen. What's next. Flai is using this funding to invest aggressively in product and engineering, deepen its integrations, and expand the workflows Flai can take responsibility for. Flai has been fortunate to build alongside some of the best operators in automotive. Having Toyota Ventures, The Friedkin Group, and Findlay Automotive Group investing alongside Base10, First Round Capital, and Y Combinator makes that especially meaningful. Flai has seen what AI deployed correctly inside dealerships can do. Now Flai is doubling down on it. Its ambition is to automate as much of the administrative work of running a dealership as possible, so the people inside the store can focus on what they do best: taking care of customers. There's an enormous amount left to build. That's what Flai is building at Flai. Flai is hiring across the team. If you want to help build the future of dealership operations, join Flai. And if you're a dealership interested in seeing what Flai can do for your store, get in touch with Flai at [email protected].

Everton owners The Friedkin Group part of £850m mega stadium redevelopment. Deputy Sports Editor - City AM Owners of Premier League club Everton, The Friedkin Group, are spending around £850m on a major new stadium that is set to host matches at the 2032 Euros. The Friedkin Group, who purchased Everton in 2024 from Farhad Moshiri, will pump around £500m into a new 60,000-capacity capital city stadium with additional funds for urban development. Their Serie A team AS Roma have been sharing the Stadio Olimpico with bitter rivals Lazio since 1953, but both sides - who respectively sit first and third in the table - are planning moves to other parts of the city. The Friedkin Group this week received approval to build their privately financed new stadium in Pietralata, around 10km from their current home, with work set to begin next March. Roma has been owned since 2020 by The Friedkin Group, after the group, run by Dan Friedkin, acquired a controlling stake in a deal that valued the Serie A club at over £500m. News updates. Stay ahead with our three daily briefings delivering all the key market moves, top business and political stories, and incisive analysis straight to your inbox. The Minister for sport and youth, Andrea Abodi, said getting approval for the arena "was a great team effort". They added: "This is a great result for all Roma fans, obviously, but also for the entire city and the country. It marks a process of modernisation for the city and also of extremely important social and environmental redevelopment." The Friedkin Group spending money. And the new arena will be one of many built or renovated ahead of the 2032 European Championships, which are being co-hosted by Italy and Turkey. Designed by Populous - the firm behind the likes of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium - Stadio della Roma will feature what is expected to become the largest single-tier stand in Europe. The Curva Sud is expected to hold 23,000 of the stadium's 60,000 capacity. Elsewhere there are plans to make the arena steep with an external facade inspired by classic Roman architecture. The mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, said he thanks "AS Roma and the Friedkin family for the investment of over €1bn and for the seriousness with which the entire project process has been followed". He added: "Let's move forward with the new stadium that Roma has been waiting for since the days of Dino Viola: we can't wait to lay the first stone."

The Friedkin Group International invests in Senra Systems, a software-powered wire harness manufacturer modernizing a critical layer of advanced manufacturing. Investments July 15, 2026 LONDON, July 15, 2026 - The Friedkin Group International (TFGI) is excited to announce its participation in Senra Systems' $65M Series B financing. The round was co-led by Lowercarbon and Interlagos, with participation from Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, CIV, 8VC, Dylan Field, Jaws Estates Capital, Alumni Ventures and Sozo Ventures. Senra Systems is building the first software-powered wire harness manufacturing platform. Wire harnesses, the bundled assemblies of cabling and components that carry power and signal, are a critical building block of nearly every advanced machine, from satellites and aircraft to electric vehicles and medical equipment. Yet harness design and production have remained decades behind the systems they enable, slowing innovation and introducing cost and schedule risk. By combining proprietary design software with an assembly-as-a-service model, Senra allows customers to move from concept to fully assembled harnesses dramatically faster, with less overhead and fewer surprises. Founded in 2023 by former SpaceX engineers Jordan Black and Benjamin Shanahan, the company has become a trusted supplier to leading aerospace and defense manufacturers, alongside customers in automotive, industrials, and healthcare, at a moment when reshoring, the rebuilding of the American defense industrial base, and rising system complexity are driving demand for dependable, domestic precision-assembly capacity. "Friedkin understands industrial businesses from the inside. Partnering with an investor who brings real operating reach across manufacturing, distribution and critical relationships, not just capital, is incredibly valuable as we accelerate into our next phase of growth," said Jordan Black, CEO and Co-Founder of Senra Systems. Why The Friedkin Group Invested Senra is building category-defining infrastructure for American advanced manufacturing. Wire harnesses are the unglamorous, mission-critical bottleneck behind every complex system, and Senra's pairing of its design software Amp with an assembly-as-a-service model attacks that bottleneck where it lives, in speed, reliability, and configurability. The founding team's SpaceX pedigree, the quality of its early customer base across aerospace and defense, and the structural tailwinds of reshoring and defense-industrial renewal are converging at exactly the right moment. That thesis sits squarely within the Friedkin DNA: backing exceptional builders of durable, real-world industrial businesses. "Jordan and Ben are the kind of founders we love to back: builders who experienced the pain of a broken supply chain and refused to accept it. We're proud to be partnering with Senra as they rebuild a foundational layer of American manufacturing," said Danny Friedkin TFGI aims to support Senra with customer introductions across Friedkin's industrial portfolio and partner network, government relations support, and operational expertise as the company scales across Factory 3 and beyond. About Senra Systems. Senra Systems is using software and automation to address a critical bottleneck in the U.S. aerospace and defense industrial base: wire harness manufacturing. Wire harnesses serve as the nervous system of aerospace and defense platforms, connecting the power, data, communications and mission-critical systems that enable operational success. Until now, wire harness production has been entirely manual, but through digitized manufacturing processes, advanced automation and workforce development, Senra delivers faster lead times, greater scalability and uncompromising quality. Senra's innovative approach is expanding domestic production capacity, strengthening supply chain resilience and building the skilled workforce needed to support American defense readiness and the next generation of aerospace innovation. About The Friedkin Group International. TFGI is the private investment arm of The Friedkin Group. The Friedkin Group provide operator-led growth capital for the critical industries of the future. The Friedkin Group back operator-led founders in building the industrial heart of the Western world, backed by the strength of its balance sheet, network, and operating businesses. The Friedkin Group invest into early-stage growth technology companies at Series A through C across the US and Europe, within Transportation, Manufacturing and Physical AI, Aerospace and Defense, and frontline workforce enablement. Companies in this article