– GERMANY, Berlin – ultimate.ai, the Helsinki and Berlin-based company building the world’s leading virtual customer service agent, has raised $20M in Series A funding, led by OMERS Ventures with participation from Felicis Ventures and existing investors HV Capital, and Maki. VC.
Concurrent with the financing, Jambu Palaniappan, Managing Partner at OMERS Ventures, will join the board.
OMERS Ventures Managing Partner Jambu Palaniappan said: “ultimate.ai’s growth has been truly spectacular, underpinned by its world-class team that is headed up by founders with a strong technical background and unrivaled knowledge of AI. There are numerous chatbot companies out there but ultimate.ai represents something much bigger because at its core is an automation company and the undisputed industry leader. We look forward to working with Sarah Al-Hussaini, Reetu Kainulainen, Jaakko Pasanen, and Markus Rautio as they expand internationally and advance their deep technological capabilities even further.”
ultimate.ai will use this latest funding to advance its AI-powered automation platform, which currently powers customer interactions in over 20 languages, and to expand to North America and further throughout Europe. The current funding round brings the 4-year-old company’s total capital raised to more than $25M.
“We’ve seen market maturity accelerate,” said CEO and Co-founder, Reetu Kainulainen. “After the first-generation of ineffective chatbots, businesses today really know what they’re looking for. Customer service automation has leap-frogged from simple FAQs to full process automation, across all digital channels. We’re really seeing the A-players emerge.”
ultimate.ai’s mission is to empower brands to drive better customer experiences through automation. The company’s no-code platform makes powerful AI technology accessible, and puts it in the hands of customer service teams, to orchestrate their operations to deliver instant resolutions around the clock, and uniquely, in every language.
“The new funding comes at a time of massive growth for us,” commented Reetu Kainulainen. “This will enable us to keep investing in a category-defining product. We have been uniquely placed to provide crucial support for businesses that have experienced a surge in online customers, and the years of foundation building, product development, and our team culture have enabled us to ride the tailwind of the COVID-19.”
ultimate.ai was founded in November 2016 in Finland by COO Sarah Al-Hussaini, CEO Reetu Kainulainen, CSO Jaakko Pasanen, and CTO Markus Rautio. The founders developed their entire deep learning stack in-house, enabling fully language-agnostic technology without the need for a translation layer. The multilingual capability is ultimate.ai’s cornerstone, driving continued growth across Europe and North America.
Aydin Senkut, Founder and Managing Partner of Felicis Ventures, said: “The customer service industry is undergoing an automation revolution. In ultimate.ai, we saw a vision that’s bold enough to lead the way. We believe that, just in the same way that category leaders have defined marketing and sales automation, ultimate.ai will do the same for customer service.”
About ultimate.ai
ultimate.ai is the leading customer service automation platform and helps brands give great support experiences to every customer, instantly. The multichannel solution, deployed across chat, email, and social, provides a bird’s eye view of customer communication and empowers brands to customize virtual agents for their unique business needs. ultimate.ai has offices in Helsinki and Berlin and is backed by HV Capital, Maki.VC, OMERS Ventures, Felicis Ventures, and Techstars.
For more information: https://www.ultimate.ai/
About OMERS and OMERS Ventures
Founded in 1962, OMERS is one of Canada’s largest defined benefit pension plans, with CAD$109 billion in net assets as of December 31, 2019. OMERS teams work in Toronto, London, New York, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Singapore, Sydney, and other major cities across North America and Europe – serving members and employers and originating and managing a diversified portfolio of high-quality investments in public markets, private equity, infrastructure, and real estate. OMERS Ventures currently manages CAD$2 billion and has made more than 50 investments in disruptive technology companies across North America and Europe.
For more information: https://www.omersventures.com/
About Felicis Ventures
Founded in 2006, Felicis Ventures is a venture capital firm that has backed 28 companies valued at $1B or more. Felicis invests in iconic companies reinventing core markets, as well as those creating frontier technologies. More than 80 Felicis portfolio companies have been acquired or gone public, including Adyen, Guardant Health, Fitbit, Shopify, Meraki, Twitch, and Ring.
For more information: https://www.felicis.com/
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