In 2011, Jordi Torras, a former Oracle VP, had a realization: companies weren’t optimizing their search technologies as well as they could be.
In a sign that investors approve, Inbenta today closed a $40 million funding round led by Tritium Partners, bringing the startup’s total raised to over $60 million.
Torras says that the new cash will be put toward people, processes and platform R&D to — in his words — “position Inbenta for the anticipated explosive growth in the conversational AI space.”
“Inbenta is developing a comprehensive platform that tailors AI-driven solutions across industries and use cases for the needs of all enterprises,” Torras continued.
“We’ve spent over a decade fine-tuning our proprietary and patented AI toolkit globally, in 35 languages, perpetually advancing it through billions of customer interactions.”
Chatbot and Messenger — both chatbots — can be built into existing websites and apps (e.g. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Slack) to provide answers to customer questions.
They retain conversation histories, automatically escalating complex queries to human agents or a ticketing system, ...
...and leverage automation to handle tasks like securing bookings, scheduling meetings and modifying orders.
Knowledge similarly supplies answers to common questions. But it’s not a chatbot — rather, it’s a sort of proactive ...
...knowledge base that can suggest contents for forms, auto-complete requests and predictively search for information.
“From an enterprise perspective, Inbenta helps firms automate customer interactions, reduce the need and cost associated with human intervention and create an always-on channel for sales, marketing and HR,” Torras said.
With its portfolio, Inbenta is competing for market share on a number of fronts. In the chatbot space, the company has rivals in Quiq and Ada, which deliver customizable, AI-powered chatbot services to brands.
Inbenta’s Knowledge product competes with offerings from startups like Sana, while Search squares off against Hebbia’s document ...
...indexing tool. Torras declined to reveal Inbenta’s revenue when asked, making it tough to gauge the company’s traction.
But in an emailed statement, Bowman stressed what he sees as Inbenta’s differentiator: “multilingual capability that requires zero data training and is perpetually improving with each interaction.”
“Being highly configurable across use cases and industries, Inbenta allows customers to get an immediate return on investment while having a platform that can meet future needs as usage expands,” Bowman added.
Dallas, Texas-based Inbenta has over 160 employees currently. It plans to grow that number to more than 200 by 2024.