Hiya (company)
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | April 2016 |
| Founder | Alex Algard |
| Headquarters | Seattle , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Alex Algard (CEO) |
| Products | Caller identification, spam and fraud call protection services |
Number of employees | 120 (2020) |
| Website | hiya |
Hiya is a company headquartered in Seattle that delivers identity services and protection against spam and fraudulent calls to a user base exceeding 500 million globally.
History
Originally developed as a caller identification application within Whitepages, Hiya became an independent startup in April 2016. At that time, Whitepages founder Alex Algard resigned to lead Hiya, which had already achieved 25 million app downloads and grew to a workforce of 120 employees by December 2020.
In early 2016, Hiya formed a collaboration with Samsung to embed its caller profile and spam filtering technology on Galaxy S7 and S7 edge models available in 16 countries. This partnership expanded in August 2016 to cover the Galaxy Note 7 across 28 countries. Additionally, Hiya introduced Hiya Cloud that month, a cloud-based caller ID and call-blocking system operating at the network level.
September 2016 marked Hiya’s enhanced presence on iOS with a comprehensive app launch compatible with iOS 10. Concurrently, it teamed up with AT&T to integrate spam protection through AT&T Call Protect. The following year, Hiya extended its spam prevention services to users of ZTE's Axon 7 smartphones.
Funding
Hiya obtained its initial external financing in October 2017, raising $18 million in a Series A round led by Balderton Capital, with participation from Nautilus Venture Partners and Lumia Capital. The funds were earmarked to support international growth efforts. Post-investment, Balderton’s Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, previously affiliated with Uber and Dropbox, joined Hiya’s board of directors.
Partnerships
In November 2023, Hiya established a partnership with Liberty Latin America focused on delivering spam and fraud call protection.
By February 2024, Hiya collaborated with Virgin Media O2 to implement AI-driven tools designed for spam and fraud prevention.
Samsung renewed its strategic alliance with Hiya through 2025 to facilitate automatic blocking of fraudulent calls on the Galaxy Note20 series.
Features
Hiya’s application enables users to identify unwanted callers and block incoming calls from specified phone numbers proactively.