# HiDesk

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/hidesk/ · added 2026-11-08 · updated 2026-11-08

**In short.** HiDesk (AI phone assistant that answers calls and chats for small businesses, Germany): Acquired by anny for undisclosed terms, October 2026. Evidence grade E: no revenue figure was checked. Team: 2 co-founders (Florestan Peters and Jeremy Meidinger) from 2025; staff size not published; the whole team moved to anny in October 2026. Launched August 2025; sold 14 months after launch.

AI phone assistant that answers calls and chats for small businesses · Germany · AI-native · team of 2 to 10 · sold · group: Customer support agents

- Outcome: Acquired by anny for undisclosed terms, October 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: E; no revenue figure)
- Launch: August 2025; months from launch to the outcome: 14
- Team: 2 co-founders (Florestan Peters and Jeremy Meidinger) from 2025; staff size not published; the whole team moved to anny in October 2026
- Outside funding: No investors, the founders and the buyer said; the about page shows the logos of the public EXIST start-up grant
- Main factor: A buyer that owned the booking system
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 2
- Tags: AI-native, Small team, Bootstrapped, Exit, B2B, Customer communication

Links:

- Visit hi-desk.de: https://hi-desk.de/en/

**The product.** An AI assistant that answers a small company's phone calls and website chats. The company forwards its existing number to HiDesk, and the assistant answers from what it knows about the business, forwards urgent calls to a person, books or records appointments, and sends a summary by email after each call. It speaks more than 90 languages, the home page says. It is sold as monthly plans with included call minutes.

**Why it worked.** The founders write that the idea came from a common problem: the phone rings and nobody can answer, while many businesses cannot find reception staff. Their customers then asked one question more than any other, whether the AI could also book. The Cologne booking-software company anny heard the same question from the other side, and in October 2026 it bought HiDesk to put the voice assistant and its booking system into one product.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

HiDesk sold an AI phone assistant: software that answers a company's phone calls with a computer voice, understands what the caller wants and acts on it. A business sends its calls to HiDesk by call forwarding (a phone setting that passes incoming calls on to another number), so it keeps its own number and needs no new hardware. The assistant answers from a knowledge base (the company's stored facts: opening hours, services, prices, rules), which it first builds by reading the company's website, then forwards urgent calls, records or books appointments and emails a summary after the call.

Florestan Peters and Jeremy Meidinger, who had both worked at the Cologne cybersecurity company SoSafe, started HiDesk in Cologne in 2025. The first dated article on its blog is from 5 August 2025, and their company, Dialogine GmbH, was entered in the Cologne commercial register on 17 November 2025. On 8 October 2026 the Cologne booking-software company anny announced on its blog that it had bought HiDesk, a day after Dealroom News reported the deal; both sides said they had agreed to keep the terms confidential. The companies said that HiDesk served more than 250 customers and partners, had become profitable within its first year and grew about 20% a month, without investors.

No revenue figure and no sale price is public, so this story has grade E: the buyer confirms the sale, but the business figures are the companies' own statements. The product is to become "anny AI" inside anny's platform; on 8 November 2026 the HiDesk site was still live with three paid plans.

## Pricing

HiDesk prices on 8 November 2026, from the company's pricing page, converted from euros at the US Federal Reserve H.10 rate of 30 October 2026, 1 euro = US$1.1163 (grade C for the prices)

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancer |  | 65.86 | about 100 call minutes, 1 parallel call, 1 user; US$0.56 a minute after that |
| Business |  | 277.96 | about 1,000 call minutes, 5 parallel calls, 10 users, website chat; US$0.28 a minute after that |
| Enterprise |  | 724.48 | about 3,000 call minutes, unlimited parallel calls and users, outbound calls, SLA; US$0.22 a minute after that |
| Extra phone number |  | 5.58 | per number per month, on every plan |

The company states the prices in euros: Freelancer 59 euros a month, Business 249 euros a month, Enterprise 649 euros a month, with extra minutes at 0.50, 0.25 and 0.20 euros and extra phone numbers at 5 euros a month. The page shows monthly prices only, so the yearly column is empty, and it does not say whether VAT is included. Minutes are counted as credits (1 call minute = 60 credits); unused credits expire at the end of the month. There is a free trial without a credit card and a 30-day money-back guarantee. The prices were read after the sale; HiDesk's own post about the sale says prices and contracts stay the same for existing customers.

## How much did HiDesk make, and what was it sold for? The numbers, graded

A two-founder AI phone assistant from Cologne, sold to a local booking-software company about 14 months after its first blog post; no revenue figure or sale price is public

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Status, October 2026 | acquired by anny | A | The buyer's own blog, 8 October 2026: "anny übernimmt das Kölner KI-Start-up HiDesk" (anny is taking over the Cologne AI start-up HiDesk) (translation). HiDesk's blog the same day: "HiDesk wird Teil von anny" (HiDesk becomes part of anny) (translation). Dealroom News reported it on 7 October 2026. | [3, 2, 5] |
| Sale price | not disclosed | A | anny's FAQ: "Über die Konditionen haben beide Seiten Stillschweigen vereinbart." (Both sides have agreed to keep the terms confidential.) (translation). Dealroom: "for an undisclosed sum". | [3, 5] |
| Company registered | Dialogine GmbH, entered in the Cologne commercial register (HRB 125527) on 17 November 2025 | B | North Data lists the entry of 17 November 2025 with Jeremy Meidinger and Florestan Peters as managing directors and a share capital of 25,000 euros, and the articles of association with the date 27 October 2025. HiDesk's imprint names Dialogine GmbH and HRB 125527; its sale post says customers' contract partner stays Dialogine GmbH. | [7, 14, 2] |
| Founded | 2025, in Cologne | A | anny: "HiDesk wurde 2025 von Florestan Peters und Jeremy Meidinger in Köln gegründet." (HiDesk was founded in 2025 by Florestan Peters and Jeremy Meidinger in Cologne.) (translation). The only Internet Archive copy of hi-desk.de before 2026, from 7 December 2021, is an empty hosting page that redirects to a default site, so no earlier product used the domain. | [3, 13] |
| First dated blog article | 5 August 2025 | C | The blog index on hi-desk.de lists articles by Florestan Peters from 5 August 2025 on. The earliest Internet Archive copy of the German home page is from 13 May 2026. The acquisitions site Acquired reports that Meidinger wrote on LinkedIn that the product had launched publicly only months before the sale. | [12, 13, 6] |
| Founders | Florestan Peters (chief executive) and Jeremy Meidinger (chief technology officer) | C | About page: Peters, an early SoSafe employee, ran growth, sales and finance; Meidinger, an AI engineer and former lead data engineer, ran the technology. anny says both gained their start-up experience at SoSafe. | [8, 3] |
| Team at the sale | the whole team, size not published | B | Trending Topics: "Das gesamte HiDesk-Team einschließlich der Gründer Florestan Peters und Jeremy Meidinger wechselt nun zu anny" (The whole HiDesk team, including the founders, is now moving to anny) (translation). No source gives a headcount. | [4, 5] |
| Customers and partners, October 2026 | more than 250 | C | Trending Topics: "HiDesk betreut bereits mehr als 250 Kunden und Partner" (HiDesk already serves more than 250 customers and partners) (translation). HiDesk's sale post says many come from leisure parks and sports facilities. The figure mixes customers and partners; the about page still shows "100+ Nutzer und Partner" (100+ users and partners) (translation). | [4, 2, 3, 8] |
| Profit and growth, October 2026 | profitable within the first year; about 20% growth a month | C | Trending Topics: "Das Startup erreichte nach eigenen Angaben innerhalb des ersten Jahres die Profitabilität" (By its own account the start-up reached profitability within its first year) (translation). Peters, quoted by HiDesk: "profitabel und mit 20 Prozent Wachstum pro Monat"; anny quotes him as "profitabel und mit 20 Prozent Wachstum im Monat" (profitable and with 20 percent growth a month) (translation). No base figure is given. | [4, 2, 3] |
| Outside funding | no investors | C | Peters: "Wir haben HiDesk ohne Investoren aufgebaut" (We built HiDesk without investors) (translation). anny's chief executive Lucian Holtwiesche said the same of HiDesk. The about page shows, under "Gefördert durch" (funded by) (translation), the logos of the German economics ministry, the EU, the EXIST start-up grant and the University of Cologne. | [2, 4, 8] |
| Prices, November 2026 | 59, 249 and 649 euros a month | C | Pricing page, read 8 November 2026. The Internet Archive copy of 13 May 2026 already shows the Business plan with 1,000 minutes included and 0.25 euros a minute after that, so the product was sold with paid plans before the sale. | [9, 13] |
| AI models and telephony | Microsoft Azure OpenAI (EU data centres) and Google Gemini; Vonage for calls; hosting by Netcup in Germany | C | Privacy policy, sections 3.7 to 3.9. The technology page says the core is "model-agnostic", with "more than ten model providers" connected, and that HiDesk also trains its own models for parts of a conversation. | [11, 10] |
| Time from the first blog article to the sale | 14 months | calc | Calculated: August 2025 to October 2026. | [12, 3] |

How to read this table: a grade A value is the buyer's own announcement. A grade B value is a press report or a register or archive record. A grade C value is a statement by HiDesk, its founders or its own pages. A "calc" value was computed on this page. Quotes in German are given in the original, followed by this page's English translation, marked "(translation)". No revenue amount exists in the sources.

## When did HiDesk launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From the first blog article in August 2025 to a sale to its neighbour anny in October 2026. Each entry carries its grade.

- **5 August 2025** (grade C [12]): The first dated article on the HiDesk blog, by Florestan Peters, on automating how a small business answers calls.
- **October to November 2025** (grade B [7]): The founders' company, Dialogine GmbH, files its articles of association (listed 27 October 2025) and is entered in the Cologne commercial register on 17 November 2025, with both founders as managing directors.
- **13 May 2026** (grade B [13]): The earliest Internet Archive copy of the German home page shows the AI reception for phone and chat, a paid Business plan, a partner programme and a customer quote from anny's co-founder and COO, Simeon Holtwiesche.
- **7 October 2026** (grade B [5]): Dealroom News reports that anny has bought HiDesk for an undisclosed sum, less than a year after HiDesk was founded, and that the founders and staff move to anny.
- **8 October 2026** (grade A [3, 2, 4]): anny and HiDesk publish their own announcements: the product becomes "anny AI", the HiDesk brand is to be merged into anny over the coming months, and existing customers keep their prices and contracts.
- **8 November 2026** (grade C [1, 9]): hi-desk.de is still live with three paid plans from 59 euros a month and a free trial.

## Why did HiDesk work?

### No new phone system

The customer keeps its number and sets a call forward to HiDesk, from a home router to a cloud phone system. HiDesk can answer at once or only after a few rings, so staff still take calls and the assistant catches the ones they miss. The home page says setup takes about five minutes.

### Answers only from stored facts

During setup the assistant reads the company's website and any uploaded documents. The technology page says it answers only from these sources and, when it finds nothing reliable, says so, takes a message or hands the call to a person under rules the customer sets.

### Priced against a part-time employee

The home page's cost calculator compares HiDesk with a part-time receptionist and a call centre, at prices it states (25 euros an hour for staff; a 49-euro base fee plus per-call and per-minute fees for a call centre). Plans are sold by included call minutes, with a fixed price for each extra minute.

### The next step was booking

Customers asked whether the AI could book, not only take messages. A booking system knows availability, prices and rules but cannot talk. anny, whose software holds exactly that data, bought HiDesk so that one product can both talk and book.

## How it was built

These details come from HiDesk's own technology page, its privacy policy and the buyer's announcement. They are grade C.

- Calls arrive by call forwarding and reach HiDesk's telephony layer by SIP, the standard protocol for internet phone calls; the privacy policy names Vonage (Nexmo) as the telephony provider.
- Each call runs through a chain: real-time speech recognition, intent detection and retrieval from the customer's knowledge base and connected calendar or CRM, an answer generated only from those sources, and speech output in a voice the customer chooses.
- The language models run on Microsoft Azure OpenAI in EU data centres and on Google Gemini, according to the privacy policy. The technology page says its own control layer, the "Agentic Core", treats the model as a replaceable part, with more than ten model providers connected, and that HiDesk trains its own models for some parts of a conversation.
- Servers are hosted by Netcup in Germany.
- After each call HiDesk emails a summary and, depending on the setup, creates a CRM record, a ticket or a calendar entry. Native integrations include Google Calendar, Outlook, Calendly, Cal.com, HubSpot and Salesforce; Zapier, Make and n8n connect other tools.
- The marketing site uses Google Analytics, PostHog, the Meta Pixel and Google Ads, the privacy policy says.
- After the sale, anny wrote that the language models behind anny AI are open models that the team fine-tunes and runs on its own infrastructure in Europe.

Sources: [10, 11, 1, 3]

## Who tried this before HiDesk, and why did they fail?

Four companies in our database of failed startups promised to take routine conversations off a business owner's hands, with people or with early language software, and failed. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Zirtual (2011 to 2015; funding US$5.5M; cause: Ran Out of Cash)

- Promise: Remote human assistants who handled email and scheduling for busy business owners.
- Why it died: It hired assistants faster than its revenue grew, without clear financial control, and stopped operating in August 2015 when it could not meet payroll.
- Record: 

### Answerly (2013 to 2016; funding US$550K; cause: Product/Tech Failure)

- Promise: FAQ chatbots on company websites that answered routine support questions and passed only the complex ones to people.
- Why it died: Language processing at the time could not handle real customer questions, and each setup needed months of manual FAQ and decision-tree work.
- Record: 

### Operator (2015 to 2020; funding US$30M; cause: Unit Economics)

- Promise: A shopping concierge that mixed people and software to find and buy hard-to-find items for customers.
- Why it died: The service needed too many people per order, and it did not move to a more automated model in time.
- Record: 

### VocalIQ (2011 to 2017; funding US$2M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A dialogue system that let people talk to computers in natural language and learned from context.
- Why it died: Large companies built their own voice assistants; Apple bought it in 2015, which ended it as an independent company.
- Record: 

## What changed

Zirtual and Operator sold human time, so every new customer needed more paid staff, and that cost ended both. Answerly tried to replace people with software when language technology could not understand real questions and every setup took months. HiDesk sold the same promise, that no customer call goes unanswered, with speech recognition and large language models from outside providers, and a setup that reads the customer's website instead of months of manual rules.

VocalIQ shows the other side: good dialogue technology was bought by a larger company that wanted it inside its own product. HiDesk ended the same way, but its buyer was not a platform giant. It was a profitable booking-software company from the same city that needed a voice in front of its booking rules, and the founders said they did not have to sell.

## Can one person copy HiDesk now?

**Verdict: The product, yes. The sale, only with the right buyer.**

An AI phone assistant for small businesses is now a crowded product that two people can build on rented speech and language models, and HiDesk says it made a profit in its first year. The exit came from a buyer who owned the missing half of the product, booking data and rules; a reader cannot copy that buyer, and no source says what the sale was worth.

1. Pick businesses where the phone never stops and staff are scarce: leisure parks, sports facilities, practices, trades.
2. Make setup a call forward plus your website address, so a customer can try it without IT help.
3. Answer only from the customer's stored facts, and hand a call to a person when the facts run out.
4. Sell plans by included call minutes, so your price follows your own per-minute cost.
5. Talk early to the software company that holds your customers' calendars and bookings: it can be a partner or a buyer.

**What is still open.** The same assistant tied to one trade's own software: workshop systems for car repair, practice software for physiotherapists, property-management tools for repair calls.

## What could go wrong for HiDesk?

- **What is not verified.** No revenue figure, no sale price and no headcount were found. The more than 250 customers and partners, the profit within the first year and the growth of about 20% a month are the companies' own statements, repeated by the press and by the buyer; the 250 mixes paying customers with partners, and HiDesk's about page still says 100+. We looked for a payment-processor profile, a founder interview with figures, and annual accounts: the register publications listed by North Data on 8 November 2026 contain none, since the company was registered in November 2025. The launch date rests on the dates of the company's own blog articles; the earliest Internet Archive copy of the site is from 13 May 2026. A reader could look for Dialogine GmbH's first annual accounts in the German company register, or for later figures from anny.
- **AI calls and disclosure.** HiDesk's technology page says callers are told at the start of each call that they are speaking with an AI, which it links to the transparency duty of the EU AI Act; a customer quote on the home page says the agent "sounds like a real person". The Enterprise plan includes outbound calls, where consent rules for calling people apply to the customer. The healthcare page shows the assistant taking prescription requests and forwarding callers who describe acute symptoms, so patient data passes through it; the privacy policy says call recordings need consent.
- **The buyer was a customer, and grant support.** anny's co-founder and COO, Simeon Holtwiesche, is quoted as a customer on HiDesk's home page, already in the Internet Archive copy of May 2026, before the sale; anny says the two teams met at his birthday. "Without investors" means no venture capital: the about page shows the logos of the public EXIST start-up grant, the German economics ministry, the EU and the University of Cologne under "funded by", and the acquisitions site Acquired reports, from Meidinger's LinkedIn posts, that the founders were accepted into Antler One, a community for founders.
- **Competition.** On this site, Estera and NewOaks AI sell the same kind of AI receptionist for calls and messages to small businesses, and HiDesk's own home page links to its comparison of 12 providers of AI phone assistants.
- **Dependence on model providers.** The privacy policy names Microsoft Azure OpenAI and Google Gemini for the AI processing and Vonage for the calls, so their prices, terms and availability set part of the cost of every call minute. The technology page says the core can switch between more than ten model providers, and anny wrote after the sale that it runs fine-tuned open models on its own infrastructure in Europe to reduce this dependence. Customers now also depend on anny's plans: the HiDesk brand is to be merged into anny within months.

## Sources

1. HiDesk – AI Phone Assistant for SMBs | 24/7 Call Answering (home page) — https://hi-desk.de/en/ (grade C). Read in full on 8 November 2026, including the FAQ, the cost calculator and the customer quotes.
2. HiDesk blog, 8 October 2026: HiDesk wird Teil von anny: Was sich für Sie ändert (und was nicht) (Florestan Peters) — https://hi-desk.de/de/blog/hidesk-wird-teil-von-anny/ (grade C). Read in full, in German. The seller's own announcement: founders' quote on investors, profit and growth, customer count, contract partner and plans after the sale.
3. anny blog, 8 October 2026: anny übernimmt HiDesk: Willkommen, Agentic Booking Management — https://anny.co/blog/anny-uebernimmt-hidesk-agentic-booking-management (grade A). Read in full, in German. The buyer's own announcement and FAQ: the takeover, the confidential terms, the founding year and founders, and the plan for open models in Europe.
4. Trending Topics, 8 October 2026: anny übernimmt Kölner KI‑Startup HiDesk (Georg Haas) — https://www.trendingtopics.eu/anny-uebernimmt-koelner-ki-startup-hidesk/ (grade B). Read in full, in German. Press report from the companies' announcement; source for the team move, the customer count, profitability and growth as the company's own statements.
5. Dealroom News, 7 October 2026: anny buys Cologne AI startup HiDesk to build "agentic booking" — https://dealroom.co/news/160554-anny-buys-cologne-ai-startup-hidesk-to-build-agentic-booking/ (grade B). Read in full. Source for the undisclosed sum, the timing less than a year after the founding and the team move.
6. Acquired (startupsacquired.com), 7 October 2026: Booking platform anny acquires Cologne AI phone-agent startup HiDesk — https://www.startupsacquired.com/deals/anny-acquires-hidesk (grade C). Read in full (downloaded by the pipeline on 8 November 2026). A secondary summary of the press reports and of Meidinger's LinkedIn posts, which this page could not read; used only for the launch timing and the Antler One mention, both marked as its report.
7. North Data: Dialogine GmbH, Köln, Amtsgericht Köln HRB 125527 — https://www.northdata.de/Dialogine%20GmbH,%20K%C3%B6ln (grade B). Read the list of register publications on 8 November 2026: entry of 17 November 2025, articles of association dated 27 October 2025, the word and figure mark "hiDesk" of 6 May 2026 and a shareholder list of 2 October 2026.
8. HiDesk: Über uns – das Team hinter HiDesk (about page) — https://hi-desk.de/de/ueber-uns/ (grade C). Read in full, in German, on 8 November 2026. Source for the founders' roles and backgrounds, the 100+ counter and the grant logos.
9. HiDesk: Pricing – AI Phone Assistant from €59/month — https://hi-desk.de/en/pricing/ (grade C). Read in full on 8 November 2026, including the plan comparison and the pricing FAQ.
10. HiDesk: Technology – How the AI Phone Assistant Works — https://hi-desk.de/en/technology/ (grade C). Read in full on 8 November 2026. Source for the call chain, the model-agnostic core, the own models and the AI disclosure at the start of calls.
11. HiDesk: Datenschutzerklärung (privacy policy) — https://hi-desk.de/de/privacy/ (grade C). Read in full, in German, on 8 November 2026. Source for the service providers: Azure OpenAI Europe, Google Gemini, Vonage, Netcup, Google Analytics, Google Ads, PostHog, Meta Pixel and Google Workspace.
12. HiDesk blog index (German) — https://hi-desk.de/de/blog/ (grade C). Read the list of articles and their dates on 8 November 2026; the earliest is dated 5 August 2025.
13. Internet Archive: captures of hi-desk.de (7 December 2021 and 13 May 2026 onwards) — https://web.archive.org/web/20260513153528/https://hi-desk.de/de/ (grade B). Read the capture list (CDX) for hi-desk.de, the 2021 capture (an empty page that redirects to a hosting default site) and the German home page of 13 May 2026 in full.
14. HiDesk: Impressum (imprint) — https://hi-desk.de/de/impress/ (grade C). Read on 8 November 2026. Names Dialogine GmbH, the Cologne register court and HRB 125527.
15. HiDesk: AI phone assistant for medical & dental practices — https://hi-desk.de/en/industries/healthcare/ (grade C). Read in full on 8 November 2026. Source for the prescription requests and the forwarding of urgent calls.
16. Federal Reserve Board, H.10 historical rates: US dollars per euro — https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h10/hist/dat00_eu.htm (grade A). Read the daily table (last update 2 November 2026) in a copy that the pipeline downloaded on 7 November 2026; used 1.1163 for 30 October 2026. It says nothing about HiDesk.
17. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run HiDesk? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: HiDesk).