Sixth-Generation Funeral Professional and Technology Executive Launch TeamTangoAI, an AI Platform Built Exclusively for Funeral and Cremation Providers

Founded by funeral director Jimmy Lucas whose family has served grieving families since 1860 and technology executive Jeff Chen, TeamTangoAI is built first for affordable online and direct-cremation brands, and works for funeral homes of any size, helping providers stay responsive around the clock while keeping staff focused on the families in their care.

FORT WORTH–DALLAS, Texas June 2026 TeamTangoAI, an artificial intelligence platform built exclusively for funeral homes, cremation providers, and deathcare organizations, has officially launched. The company was founded by Jimmy Lucas, a sixth-generation funeral professional whose family has served families since 1860, and Jeff Chen, a technology executive with more than 25 years of experience in enterprise technology, cloud infrastructure, and business automation.

Unlike general-purpose AI tools, TeamTangoAI was developed specifically for the workflows and communication needs of the funeral and cremation profession first-call intake, after-hours coverage, scheduling, family questions, and the routine interactions that pull staff away from the families in front of them.

The company is focused first on the providers it believes it can help most: affordable, online and direct-cremation brands. Those businesses run on lean teams, high call volume, and the tightest margins in deathcare, which makes every missed call and every interruption costly. TeamTangoAI is equally capable in a traditional funeral home, but Lucas and Chen built it around the realities of the modern, digital-first cremation business and that is where the platform delivers the clearest return.

The platform was not built in a vacuum. It was developed and refined inside Lucas’s own direct-cremation business, Simple Cremation, where the daily strain of missed calls and constant interruptions first sparked the idea.

“The idea grew out of a challenge in our own business,” said Lucas, co-founder of TeamTangoAI and CEO of Lucas Funerals & Cremations. “Our team was constantly being pulled away by simple phone calls and routine questions, and every interruption takes attention away from the families we’re serving. We wanted to know whether technology could handle the repetitive work so our people could focus on what requires compassion and expertise.”

To build it, Lucas turned to Jeff Chen, his friend of nearly four decades. The two share more than a long friendship: when Chen’s parents passed away, it was Lucas who served as their funeral director and celebrant and today both families hold property at the same cemetery. That history shaped how the partners think about technology’s place in a profession built on trust.

“The funeral profession is built on compassion and personal connection,” said Chen, co-founder of TeamTangoAI. “Technology should remove friction from everyday operations, but it should never replace the human relationships at the heart of funeral service. Our goal is to give directors back the hours lost to routine calls and paperwork so they can spend that time with families.”

TeamTangoAI’s assistants always identify themselves as virtual assistants and are trained on each firm’s pricing, services, policies, and tone. On a first call, the assistant can either handle the initial intake or warm-transfer the caller to an on-call cremation specialist or funeral director entirely according to each firm’s preference, so providers stay in control of how families are received.

The platform brings together five capabilities: an AI phone and text assistant that answers questions, captures leads, and routes urgent calls around the clock; website chat that guides guides families through online arrangements after hours; smart scheduling for arrangement conferences, confirmations, and reminders; document automation that reduces manual data entry; and a director dashboard that brings calls, conversations, leads, and appointments into a single view. Each capability is built with privacy, security, and the responsible handling of sensitive family information at its core.

Early adopters include Cremation Specialists of Pennsylvania, owned by Brian Leffler.

“In the cremation business, every family matters, and every missed call is a missed opportunity to help someone in need. TeamTangoAI makes sure we’re always available, even when we can’t be everywhere at once. Families receive immediate, compassionate responses that sound like they’re coming from a member of our staff. It’s the first AI solution I’ve seen that genuinely understands how funeral and cremation professionals serve families.” Brian Leffler, Owner, Cremation Specialists of Pennsylvania

“We didn’t set out to build an AI company, we set out to solve a problem,” Lucas said. “If we can help funeral professionals spend more time serving families and less time managing interruptions, we’ve done exactly what we hoped to do.”

To learn more or schedule a demonstration, visit TeamTangoAI.com.

About TeamTangoAI

TeamTangoAI is an AI-powered communication and workflow platform built exclusively for the deathcare profession, with a particular focus on affordable online and direct-cremation providers, and is equally suited to traditional funeral homes. Founded by sixth-generation funeral professional Jimmy Lucas and technology executive Jeff Chen, the platform helps firms stay available to families through AI phone and text assistants, website chat, scheduling, document automation, and a director dashboard reducing routine administrative burdens so staff can focus more fully on the families they serve. Developed and proven inside Lucas’s own cremation business before being offered to the wider profession, TeamTangoAI is built on a simple principle: compassion first, technology second.