conversational AI

Bret Taylor’s new AI company aims to help customers get answers and complete tasks automatically

We’ve been hearing about former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor’s latest gig since he announced he was leaving the CRM giant in November 2022. Last February we heard he was launching an AI startup b

Voiceflow, a platform for building conversational AI experiences, raises $15M

The demand for conversational AI — mostly chatbots — has arguably never been higher, riding the publicity wave of systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Last year, Gartner predicted that one

Baidu to deploy conversational AI across search, in-car entertainment and more

Baidu today revealed more details about its much-anticipated intelligent Ernie Bot, widely seen as the search giant’s counterpart to ChatGPT. Ernie Bot is built atop Baidu’s large language

Would Baidu’s answer to ChatGPT make a difference?

Baidu, China’s top search engine provider and robotaxi developer, is apparently working on its own counterpart to ChatGPT. The news, first reported by Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, sent

Inbenta, a provider of AI-powered chatbots and more, lands $40M

In 2011, Jordi Torras, a former Oracle VP, had a realization: Companies weren’t optimizing their search technologies as well as they could be. He founded Inbenta to solve this, providing profess

MeetKai launches new room-scanning tech and metaverse builder

Not everyone believes that the metaverse — social, VR-centric worlds — has staying power. But MeetKai is among the steadfast optimists. Founded in 2018, the startup initially focused on co

Tenyx raises $15M to build more intelligent voice-based customer service AI

Automating customer service tasks, particularly those that require agents to speak with customers on the phone, is something of a holy grail in the enterprise. According to a survey by OnePoll commiss

Level AI lands $13M Series A to build conversational intelligence for customer service

Level AI, an early-stage startup from a former member of the Alexa product team, wants to help companies process customer service calls faster by understanding the interactions they’re having wi

Cognigy raises $44M to scale its enterprise-focused conversational AI platform

Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly common part of how customer service works — a trend that was accelerated in this past year as so many other services went virtual and digital

Botpress nabs $15M Series A to help developers build conversational apps

Botpress, a Montreal-based early-stage startup, wants to make it easier for developers to build conversational-based apps, meaning humans interact with the app by speaking instead of typing, clicking

ServiceNow acquires conversational AI startup Passage AI

ServiceNow announced this morning that it has acquired Passage AI, a startup that helps customers build chatbots in multiple languages, something that should come in handy as ServiceNow continues to m

Clinc raises $52M Series B as it marches toward IPO

Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Clinc is today announcing a $52 million Series B. The company behind the conversational AI platform netted cash from Insight Partners, DFJ Growth, Drive Capital, Hyde Park Ventu

Rasa raises $13M led by Accel for its developer-friendly open-source approach to chatbots

Conversational AI and the use of chatbots have been through multiple cycles of hype and disillusionment in the tech world. You know the story: first you get a launch from the likes of Apple, Facebook,

Bonobo AI raises $4.5M seed round to help companies turn interactions with customers into valuable data

Bonobo AI, an AI-based platform that helps companies get insights from customer support calls, texts and other interactions, announced today that it has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by G20

Microsoft acquires conversational AI startup Semantic Machines to help bots sound more lifelike

Microsoft announced today that it has acquired Semantic Machines, a Berkeley-based startup that wants to solve one of the biggest challenges in conversational AI: making chatbots sound more human and

Microsoft makes Azure Bot Service generally available for developers

Microsoft introduced the Azure Bot Framework more than two years ago and companies have been building chatbots for a variety of scenarios ever since. Today, the company made generally available the M

Facebook buys Ozlo to boost its conversational AI efforts

Facebook has gone ahead and purchased Charles Jolley's conversational AI startup Ozlo. Jolley, formerly Head of Platform for Android at Facebook, will not be returning to the company. The Ozlo team

Google Assistant, its AI-based personal helper, rolls out to Nougat and Marshmallow handsets

Google continues its march to expand its place in the mobile ecosystem, anchored by the fact that its Android OS is by far the most ubiquitous smartphone platform in the world. Today, the company

Conversational AI and the road ahead

In recent years, we’ve seen an increasing number of so-called “intelligent” digital assistants being introduced on various devices. Although the technology behind these applications keeps gettin

Amazon has a shiny new startup accelerator to advance conversational AI

Big tech companies have been creating accelerators left and right to evangelize their brands and get developers engaged with APIs and other open-source efforts. Today, Amazon joined the crowd by annou