US-based automated conversational software developer Kore.ai increased its series C funding to $73.5m yesterday having secured an extension from graphics processing unit (GPU) producer Nvidia.
The company completed a $70m first close of the round in September this year, with the $50m equity portion co-led by financial services firm PNC and growth capital firm Vistara Growth and backed by NextEquity Partners, Nicola Wealth and Beedie Capital, while Sterling National Bank supplied a $20m debt facility.
Founded in 2013, Kore.ai has built an artificial intelligence (AI)-equipped virtual assistant platform that allows organisations to automate customer, employee and partner engagement efforts.
As part of the deal, Nvidia has formed a strategic partnership with Kore.ai, which will involve the latter integrating Riva, the corporate’s GPU-driven software development kit, in a bid to create an accurate and fast speech AI offering.
Raj Koneru, founder and chief executive of Kore.ai, said: “In addition to its investment, Nvidia brings an industry-leading team and advanced AI technology. We will work together to expand best-in-class support to enterprise customers so that they can leverage conversational AI modules to power their customer and internal workforce applications.”
John Ashley, industry general manager for financial services and technology at Nvidia, added: “This collaboration will give enterprise organisations the ability to tackle key technology challenges in speech recognition, [natural language processing] and [text-to-speech] integration.”
Vistara Growth had previously provided an undisclosed amount of funding for the company in late 2019 but no further funding information is available.
