- Lightyear launched an agentic AI service that automate telecom quoting and installation for enterprise customers
- The Quoting Agent returned bids 30-50% faster while the Implementation Agent cut install times by five to 10 days
- Lightyear said it trained the agents on more than 2 million quotes across 1,200 carriers gathered since 2019
Lightyear on Tuesday launched an agentic AI platform that sources and install network services with far less human oversight than previously required, the company said.
Dispatch, the entry point agent, answers plain-language questions about a customer's network, including which contracts are near renewal, where rates run above market, and which sites lack backup connectivity. In early use, customers assembled inventory and spend reports in a median of one minute and two prompts, Lightyear said.
The Quoting Agent takes a customer's requirements, procurement rules and Lightyear's pricing data, then puts requests for proposals out to the carriers it judges the best fit. The agent returns quotes 30-50% faster and generates 15-25% more qualified bids than the partly automated approach it replaces, Lightyear said.
And the Implementation Agent reads platform data, project updates and email threads for every active install, compares progress against the milestones a carrier promised and flags orders that are running late before a person notices. That agent trims installation time by five to 10 days, Lightyear said.
Agents work within rules the customer sets, and certain actions pause for human approval before they run, the company said.
Is an 'agentic platform for telecom' really a first?
Agentic AI is not new to telecom. Carriers and their suppliers have spent the past two years wiring agents into the software that runs and monitors networks, and Nokia, Ciena's Blue Planet and others have made agentic automation a centerpiece of their pitches.
However, the agents crowding the market sit on the operator side, said Dennis Thankachan, CEO of Lightyear, in an interview with Fierce. These agents run networks, monitor traffic and handle support. Nothing comparable exists on the enterprise side, he said. "When it comes to buying, managing vendors, making vendor decisions — there's actually nothing that exists for the enterprise," Thankachan said. "So we're the first for that."
How does Lightyear make money, and why do carriers play along?
The pitch depends on carriers cooperating with a platform that sits between them and their customers. Enterprises buy Lightyear's software as a subscription, but procurement is free; the carrier pays Lightyear a commission. "We get a commission that's similar to what that sales rep would otherwise get. It's just going to a different source," Thankachan said.
He compared the model to a supplier's presence on Amazon: the platform aggregates demand, and vendors follow it. Lightyear works with hundreds of ISPs and claims near-total U.S. carrier coverage, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, though Thankachan said coverage thins among regional and international carriers.
Lightyear's most important competition is not another platform but the telecom brokers and consultants — a large, entrenched business in the U.S. — that enterprises have long hired to shop carriers for them. Lightyear's wager is that software and agents can do that work better and cheaper, the company said.
Where Lightyear stands now
Lightyear raised a $13.1 million Series A in 2021, a year after a $3.7 million seed round. The company has since added a $31 million Series B, led by Altos Ventures, in late 2024. Thankachan put total funding at $65 million, roughly 400 enterprise customers — among them Five Guys, Alo Yoga and Pandora Jewelry — and about 80 employees, up from 35 two years ago.
The company's edge is data no rival has: more than 2 million quotes across 1,200 carriers, plus the workflows its staff built handling those deals since 2019, Thankachan said. That history is what lets the agents "execute specialized telecom workflows rather than layering general-purpose AI onto individual tasks."
Dispatch and the two agents are available to all Lightyear customers now. The company said it plans to extend agents to contract renewals, network changes and invoice disputes, aiming to cover the full telecom lifecycle by 2027.
Learn more about agentic AI and Lightyear on Fierce Network
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