PolyAI's €46M raise for Conversational AI

I noted this one last month and thought I should make sure to document it – just in case it wasn't on your radar.

PolyAI has a very simple statement on its website: Their technology can help resolve over 50% of calls and consistently deliver your best brand experience.

The company announced that it's raised a whopping €46M in its Series C. Here are the details from the post by EUStartups:

The London-based AI startup PolyAI has just raised over €46 million in a Series C funding round, backed by new investors Hedosophia, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm) and Zendesk, with follow-on investments from Khosla Ventures, Georgian, Point72 Ventures, Sands Capital and Passion Capital. With this raise, PolyAI has now secured over €110 million in funding.

110M is some funding!

They've done quite a bit with it - they're specialising in quite a few key industries including healthcare, hotels, restaurants, retail, telecoms, travel and utilities... oh and of course, Financial Services. The client list is looking impressive – I see logos from Marriott, Whitebread, VW and Ceasars on their website.

Check out this example video from their website about how "Lisa" manages her order tracking query through a PolyAI voice AI:

I'd say that sounds very good indeed, although I do have to say that Lisa was a lot more patient (and less exasperated!) than many customers. It's a great use case.

You know that I have a very specific interest in Financial Services Conversational AI so I was keen to see what the PolyAI team's offering looks like. I have to say that I was very impressed by this statement and graphic:

Handle 50% of calls in less than 6 weeks? Impressive.

I thought I'd have a listen to some of their sample financial service calls. Here's one featuring John:

I really loved the breath noises that the PolyAI system was using with John. Loved it. Very lifelike. I also really liked the various intonations that the system was generating.

The concern I have is about reliability in a financial services setting. You simply can't have Generative AI getting creative. So I would like to see more information from the company on how they're delivering predictable and guaranteed results for financial institutions. Although I did see this on one of their webpages by way of explanation:

Ethical and safe generative AI: Smart, gated generative AI use – putting GenAI to work in the right parts of your customer conversations, promoting brand safety while benefiting from the immense knowledge and increased empathy of a generative-powered conversation.

Nice work PolyAI - and congratulations on the fund raise!