Artificial Intelligence (AI) based platforms are evolving the ways voice is used to carry out your interaction with smartphones, home devices and other IoT gadgets. Siri, Google Assitant and Amazon’s Alexa have changed the way we communicate with smart devices.
The latest funding addition!
On the very similar lines, Sherpa.ai, a Spanish language digital voice assistant AI startup has announced recently that it has added $8.5 million (around €7.5 million) to its Series A funding. Among the investors in the current round are the Mundi Ventures fund, based in Madrid, London and Seattle; several business angels such as Alex Cruz, president and CEO of British Airways, and the Basque fund Orza, which channels the investments of pension funds Geroa and Elkarkidetza.
With this, the startup has scaled a the total funding to $15 million in Series A. Also, the startup’s app has surpassed 5 million active users milestone. The funding in the Series A round has been done in order to depict a show of confidence ahead of Series B new funding in the second half of 2019, which is expected to be around $20 million (around €17.5 million).
Plans for 2019 and beyond
With the funds raised, Sherpa.ai plans to double its staff this year, from its current team of 32 people. Further, the Spanish startup, based in Bilbao and Silicon Valley (the latter is only commercial), also plans to open two new offices this year, one in Asia and one in Latin America. They are still deciding in which countries they will do it, but they shuffle Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Hong Kong in the first case, and Mexico will almost be safe in the second.
As part of its 2019 plan, Sherpa unveiled two new platforms at the end of last year to lead the AI market — Sherpa.ai Conversational OS, which allows integrating AI-based digital assistant technology and machine learning on any device. And, the second, Sherpa.ai Predictive and Recommending Engine that will be able to anticipate the needs of the users, thanks to the use of the AI algorithms developed by the company, allowing any company to integrate them into its own products.
In addition, Sherpa has announced the update of its assistant mobile application and the launch of new applications during the next months.
Sherpa.ai was founded in 2012 by Xabi Uribe-Etxebarria, who’s also the CEO of the startup. The company has been recognised by the US consultancy CB Insights as one of the 100 most innovative companies in artificial intelligence in the world.
All in all, this technology is ideal for manufacturers who want to develop new business models based on offering digital services.
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