Armstrong Plumbing Helped Broccoli AI Build Its Call Product

Marcelle Flowers, who was CEO of Sacramento-based Armstrong Plumbing when it became Broccoli AI’s first customer, helped shape the startup’s call-handling product.

Armstrong became Broccoli’s first customer after Flowers met Broccoli CEO Abhishek (AJ) Jain and co-founder Aditya Ketkar in June 2024. The founders had first built a system that called customers to remind them about appointments. Flowers asked them to take on a different problem: calls coming into her plumbing business.

Armstrong was paying $5,000 a month for an answering service, Flowers said, but it booked jobs into the company’s scheduling software only 33% of the time. She asked Jain and Ketkar to build a tool for incoming calls and said they delivered a working version in 10 days. Her request focused on the handoff from a customer call to a booked appointment in Armstrong’s software.

Flowers took on an advisory role at Broccoli before moving into its COO job. She now holds the company’s chief industry officer title. Flowers initially feared AI could cost her employees their jobs. The appointment reminder changed her view; she recalled thinking, “That hooks me.”

Broccoli’s AI agents answer calls, book jobs and follow up on estimates for home-service businesses. Flowers said the founders learned how her business worked before building around its needs: “They didn’t start with AI. They started by sitting with us, learning our business, and solving what actually mattered.”

Jain said Wednesday that Broccoli had raised $52 million across two funding rounds, nine months apart. He identified them as a $22 million Series A and a $30 million Series B, with Khosla Ventures leading both and Y Combinator and Operator Partners also participating. Jain said the capital would support hiring and product development.

A Form D for Broccoli Intelligence, Inc. lists an offering of $26,642,696 that includes SAFE conversions. The filing records $23,692,704 sold and $2,949,992 remaining. It does not label the offering as a particular funding round or name the investors. The filing gives Jan. 16, 2026, as the first sale date and counts 22 investors.