US-based artificial intelligence technology developer X.ai raised $23m on Thursday in a series B round featuring telecommunications and internet company SoftBank, which invested through its SBNY unit.
Two Sigma Ventures, the venture capital arm of investment manager Two Sigma Investments, led the round, which also included DCM Ventures, Work-Bench Ventures, IA Ventures, Firstmark Capital, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, CrunchFund and Pritzker Group Venture Capital.
Founded in 2014, X.ai is working on an AI-based electronic personal assistant called Amy, currently in beta, which can schedule meetings on a user’s behalf. The series B capital will be used to expand the startup’s data science team and build up its customer acquisition and enterprise sales teams.
Dennis R. Mortensen, X.ai’s founder and chief executive, said: “Amy relieves a huge amount of pain for our beta customers, saving them hours each week.
“This financing will allow us to extend our exceptional data science team and will support the rollout of our pro and business editions later this year. And our pricing will reflect our commitment to democratising the personal assistant.”
X.ai previously raised $2.1m in a 2014 seed round backed by SoftBank unit SoftBank Capital, IA and Lerer Ventures, before adding $9.2m from SoftBank, FirstMark, IA, Pritzker Group and CrunchFund in January 2015.
The company secured the series B funding at a valuation of “around $100m,” TechCrunch reported, citing reliable sources.