Food & hospitality

Lilac Labs

Website

At Lilac, we automate the person taking order at the drive thru with a voice AI. We're building this for Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) dealing with an historical labor shortage and rising wages. Previous attempts at drive-thru voice ordering are costly to implement and have failed to deliver the accuracy and latency needed. It's now possible

Founded 2024Origin source ↗Checked 2026-09-15

Overview

At Lilac, we automate the person taking order at the drive thru with a voice AI. We're building this for Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) dealing with an historical labor shortage and rising wages.

Previous attempts at drive-thru voice ordering are costly to implement and have failed to deliver the accuracy and latency needed. It's now possible to build a voice interface that passes the threshold for a great customer experience.

In the United States, there are 200,000 Drive-Thrus handling 6 Billion visits a year. At 3 minutes per order, that's 34,000 human years spent on taking orders annually. Per location, on average we can deliver around $100,000 of value in terms of labor savings, upsell revenue lift, and training costs.

Company description As recorded 2026-11-08
LinkedIn
Food & hospitalityAI agentBusinessesSmall businessesSubscription

Founders & team

Tony Kam

Founder/CEO

Co-founder and CEO at OpenTag. Previously at Tesla and founded Lilac Labs (S24). Studied EECS at Berkeley.

LinkedIn X
Founder profile As recorded 2026-09-15

Shelden Shi

Founder/CTO

Co-Founder and CTO at OpenTag. Previously founded Lilac Labs (S24). Studied CS and CogSci at UC Berkeley.

LinkedIn
Founder profile As recorded 2026-09-15
4team members reported
Source-reported As recorded 2026-09-15

Founded 2024 · Source

News & product activity

Sources & observations

Y Combinator

Profile depthverified profile
Website observationwebsite unreachable
Last website check2026-11-11
Location · source statedSan Francisco, CA, USA
Pricing evidenceNo pricing page confirmed
Maturity: Not assessed · 3 of 6 areas documented

Source-based assessment · automated evidence rules

The source reports an inactive or acquired company; current product identity needs review.

Maturity is an evidence-based assessment, not a success rating. It may understate the current stage where evidence is limited. Coverage records documented areas, not a complete or independently audited company history.

Stage definitions
independent websitesource corroborationdescriptive evidenceclassified market and modelsourced peoplesourced founding year
startup.observe Directory coverage · Sources & method