Parloa, a conversational AI platform, has recently secured $66 million in a Series B round. This funding comes just a year after the company raised $21 million from various European investors to support its global expansion.
The German company has set its sights on the United States, having opened a New York office last year. This hub claims to have assisted in the enrollment of multiple Fortune 200 companies in the region. Parloa has successfully secured Altimeter Capital as the lead backer for their latest round. Altimeter Capital is a renowned U.S.-based VC firm known for its investments in prominent companies such as Uber, Airbnb, Snowflake, Twilio, and HubSpot.
AI and automation have been present in customer service for some time now. However, there is a renewed interest from investors in truly intelligent “conversational” AI, thanks to the emergence of advanced language models and generative AI infrastructure. Established players are consistently securing significant amounts of funding. For instance, Kore.ai recently completed a substantial $150 million funding round with support from prominent investors like Nvidia. In another development, Bret Taylor, an entrepreneur and former Salesforce CEO, recently introduced Sierra, a customer experience platform centered on the idea of “AI agents.” The platform has successfully secured over $100 million in funding from venture investors.
Parloa is in a prime position to take advantage of the current hype surrounding “AI with everything.” This hype has reached a peak in recent years, as companies are actively looking for ways to improve efficiency through automation.
Established in 2018, the startup has already attracted prestigious clients like European insurance leader Swiss Life and sporting goods retailer Decathlon. These companies rely on Parloa’s platform to streamline customer communications, including emails and instant messaging.
However, the aspect that co-founder and CEO Malte Kosub believes sets Parloa apart is its “voice.”.
“Our strategy has always prioritized ‘voice first,’ which we believe is the most important aspect of the customer experience,” Kosub explained in an email to Eltrys. Parloa’s AI-based voice conversations have a remarkably human-like quality that sets them apart from other solutions.
Stefan Ostwald, the co-founder and CTO of Parloa, claims that the company’s establishment six years ago deeply ingrained AI. The company utilizes a combination of proprietary and open-source LLMs to train models for speech-to-text applications.
We have trained several speech-to-text models specifically designed for phone audio quality and customer service applications. “We have created a custom telephony infrastructure to address the issue of latency in voice automation. Additionally, we have developed our own LLM agent framework specifically for customer service,” he explained.
Parloa had previously secured around $25 million in funding, with the majority coming from its successful Series A round last year. With an additional $66 million in its coffers, the company is now well-positioned to expand its operations in both Europe and the United States. Kosub observed that the company has experienced a significant increase in its revenue over the past three years.
In 2023, we managed to penetrate the US market. According to Kosub, our product’s exceptional performance and swift triumph in the United States have exceeded all expectations.
In addition to lead investor Altimeter, Parloa’s Series B received investments from EQT Ventures, Newion, Senovo, Mosaic Ventures, and La Familia Growth. Today’s funding brings the company’s total capital raised to $98 million, following its $21 million Series A, which was led by EQT Ventures, in 2023.
