This blog post is adapted from an Authority Magazine interview with Chris Hill. You can read the complete interview at: Startup Revolution: Chris Hill of Carbyne on How Their Emerging Startup Is Changing the Game
I didn’t expect a story about getting robbed on a beach to change my career trajectory, but that’s exactly what happened. When I first met Carbyne’s CEO and Co-Founder, Amir Elichai, he explained how he called emergency services after being robbed, only to realize they couldn’t locate him.
Not wouldn’t, but couldn’t.
That was my introduction to the broken state of emergency response technology. Once I understood that most public safety answering points (PSAPs) today work with decades-old systems that lack caller location information and multimedia, I couldn’t unsee it. It was a challenge too critical to ignore.
Today, Carbyne is building something that hasn’t existed before: a real-time, cloud-native platform that delivers advanced capabilities like location, video, translation, and AI-powered insights directly into the hands of 911 call handlers when they need that information most. And we’re doing it in partnership with the actual emergency response professionals on the front lines.
A Front-Row Seat to Impact
One of my most memorable days at Carbyne was visiting a PSAP that had just gone live with our platform. Witnessing an emergency telecommunicator light up when a call from a Spanish-speaking caller came in, and how our system automatically identified the language and started translating it in real time was pure magic.
Not because it was flashy, but because it worked. We helped someone get the help they needed faster.
We talk a lot about digital transformation in tech. But transformation isn’t just a business goal in public safety; it’s a moral imperative. Seconds saved can be lives saved. And that’s the standard we at Carbyne hold ourselves to.
Where AI Fits—and Where It Doesn’t
There’s a lot of buzz around AI, and for good reason. At Carbyne, we’re using AI to free up emergency telecommunicators so they can focus on helping callers instead of juggling data entry across multiple systems. Our AI can transcribe conversations in real time, detect languages, triage calls based on urgency, and even generate automatic callbacks for dropped 911 calls.
But let me be clear: AI for AI’s sake isn’t a solution, and AI should never replace humans on the other end of the line. It should empower them.
One of our core design principles is that technology should reduce stress for PSAP staff, not add to it. Our 2024 Pulse of 9-1-1 survey with NENA shows the real crisis: 82% of centers struggle to fill open positions, and nearly a quarter of respondents say the job has affected their marriages. So we’re not just building software, we’re building support systems that help call takers and responders do their work better and faster.
Trust: The Ultimate Force Multiplier
In the public sector, trust is everything. You won’t get a second chance if your customers don’t believe in you. That’s why our best growth strategy has always been listening to our customers, employees, and partners. When we hear about pain points, we don’t patch them, we reimagine the workflows entirely.
Innovation doesn’t come from adding features; it comes from removing friction.
A startup’s greatest asset isn’t its roadmap, but its team’s ability to adapt when the roadmap changes. That mindset is baked into Carbyne’s DNA, and having a team that understands this and that views change as par for the course is critical for success.
We may be building the plane as we fly it, but we also fly it with purpose.
The Road Ahead
We’ve come a long way since Amir’s beachside emergency. Today, Carbyne powers mission-critical emergency communications, supporting over 150 million emergency calls annually for public safety agencies across the United States, and impacting more than 250 million people worldwide—making Carbyne the leading provider of NG9-1-1 and cloud-based emergency communication solutions.
But we’re just getting started.
From disaster response to intelligent routing, our platform continues to evolve, always with one question in mind: How do we make it easier for heroes to be heroes? Because when a call comes in, there’s no time to wait for innovation to catch up. It has to be there already.
That’s what we’re building at Carbyne.
Chris Hill is the Chief Operating Officer at Carbyne, leading global operations, go-to-market strategy, and customer experience. With over 25 years of experience scaling B2B and B2G companies, Chris brings deep expertise in operational leadership and public sector growth. Before joining Carbyne, he held senior roles at Synchronoss Technologies, Tsunami AR/VR, and AT&T, where he built and led a $1B business unit. Chris has a BA in Economics from the University of Virginia and completed the General Management Program at Harvard Business School.