In a successful Series B fundraising round, Parloa, a German conversational AI platform that specializes in customer service, raised $66 million. This substantial amount is just one year after it secured $21 million to support its international expansion from a number of European investors. The business is now concentrating more on the US market after opening an office in New York. Thanks in part to its new American headquarters, this calculated move has already drawn the interest of "several Fortune 200 companies" as clients. Altimeter Capital, a U.S. venture capital firm well-known for its investments in significant businesses including Uber, Airbnb, Snowflake, Twilio, and HubSpot, is leading the funding round.
While the customer service industry has long been involved in AI and automation, the introduction of sophisticated large language models (LLMs) and generative AI infrastructure has reignited interest in advanced, intelligent conversational AI technology. Not to be outdone, other major companies in the market have also received a substantial amount of money lately. Kore.ai, for example, secured $150 million from investors, including Nvidia. In addition, Bret Taylor, the former CEO of Salesforce, raised nearly $100 million in February to establish Sierra, an AI-based customer experience platform.
Since its founding in 2018, Parloa has grown significantly, counting Swiss Life and Decathlon among its notable clientele. These companies utilize the platform to automate consumer communications via email and instant messaging. Malte Kosub, co-founder and CEO of the firm, highlights Parloa's distinctive speech-first approach in an interview with TechCrunch, which he thinks distinguishes them by providing the most significant customer experience through AI-driven voice interactions that closely resemble human communication.
Co-founder and CTO Stefan Ostwald says AI has always been a key component of Parloa's strategy. The business creates models especially for speech-to-text applications that are appropriate for customer service scenarios and phone audio quality by combining proprietary and open-source LLMs. Furthermore, Parloa has created a custom telephony infrastructure to lower latency, which is essential for voice automation.
After raising $21 million in its Series A in 2023, Parloa has raised a total of over $98 million to date. With this amount, the company is well-positioned to continue growing in the European and American markets. According to Kosub, the company has tripled its yearly sales over the last three years and, since 2023, has made substantial inroads into the U.S. market, with outcomes that have above projections. The Series B funding round also saw contributions from EQT Ventures, Newion, Senovo, Mosaic Ventures, and La Familia Growth.