Southampton's We UC launches Olatti business platform

Southampton-based We UC has launched Olatti, a business communications platform for UK small and medium-sized businesses. The product marks a shift from reselling third-party systems to operating software built in-house.

Olatti was developed by entrepreneur Axel Molist and a 20-person team linked to circle.cloud, the Southampton telecoms business he founded. We UC, another company founded by Molist, operates the platform, sells it directly and supplies it to circle.cloud as its first reseller.

For years, circle.cloud sold a larger vendor's phone platform under licence, reflecting a common model among telecoms providers of its size. Instead, Molist chose to build his own system, starting with network infrastructure before moving into software development in late 2021.

The launch gives the group direct control of the full product stack, from infrastructure and network to software. Molist said the project was built without external funding and follows more than a decade of growth since he started circle.cloud from a spare bedroom in Southampton.

The businesses he founded now employ more than 150 people and serve more than 10,000 users. Circle Technology Group, the parent company of circle.cloud, also acquired telecommunications specialist Tetra Networks in 2025 and is targeting 100,000 users by 2035.

Olatti combines calling, messaging, meetings, recording, transcription and searchable conversation history in one platform. Users can also trigger actions by voice, including placing calls through spoken instructions.

According to the company, the platform also works with AI assistants through the Model Context Protocol, allowing users to ask an assistant in plain English to send messages, rearrange meetings or pull reports through Olatti. Call recordings, transcriptions and summaries are hosted on the company's own infrastructure in UK data centres rather than processed by an outside transcription or AI supplier.

Built in-house

Molist said the move away from licensed third-party systems was driven by frustration with the limits of external platforms. He said owning both the software and infrastructure allows faster changes in response to customer requests.

"The biggest cost in a small business is not the conversations that go badly. It is the conversations that never happen. It is the call someone puts off because finding the number, the app and the right moment is too much effort. We built Olatti so people can just have the conversation," said Axel Molist, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of circle.cloud.

"We spent years limited by a third-party system, unable to build exactly what our customers needed. Owning the whole stack means that when a customer asks for something on a Monday morning, we can often have it live by Friday. We ship updates to production every week," Molist said.

The company is targeting service-led firms, from single-user businesses to organisations with several hundred staff. It named agencies, accountants, recruiters, design studios, architecture firms and consultancies among its target sectors.

Southampton base

Molist grew up in Barcelona and moved to Southampton to study audio technology at Solent University. He partly funded himself by working as a DJ before starting circle.cloud.

He said the business had deliberately stayed independent and local rather than seeking outside capital and relocating.

"I have always believed in vertical integration, in making sure we control the software and the infrastructure for the services we provide," Molist said.

"We could have taken investment and grown much faster, and probably moved to London; we chose to remain bootstrapped, stay in Southampton and build something we own," Molist said.

The launch also includes a founding club for the first 100 UK teams on its waiting list, with discounted pricing retained as the product expands. Published monthly prices, excluding VAT, are £6 per user for Metered, £20 for Plus and £25 for Unlimited. Annual prices are £5, £17 and £21 per user per month respectively, billed annually.

Two early customers endorsed the product. Johnathan Riceman, Managing Director of Endeavour Recruitment Solutions, said: "It's the first phone tool that keeps up with how we actually work. It is the single best decision we have made for our communications in this business."

Daleep Pandey, Managing Director of Pandey & Co, said: "Olatti is the best thing that has ever happened in this practice."