– VEG announced a $100m financing round co-led by D1 Capital Partners and Fidelity Management & Research Company, and supported by Durable Capital Partners.
– This third round of financing will bring total equity raised to an estimated $150m since inception and positions VEG to continue to invest in its people by providing the best support system and work culture within the veterinary field.

– PolyAI, a voice assistant company, raised $15m funding.
– The round was led by Silicon Valley’s Khosla Ventures, and joined by Point72 Ventures, Amadeus Capital, Sands Capital Ventures, Passion Capital and Entrepreneur First.
– It brings PolyAI to a valuation of $100m.
– PolyAI claims its voice assistant can be turned live more quickly, in more languages, and charges on a per-minute basis.

– Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence SaaS voice automation company Skit, formerly known as Vernacular.ai, developed its AI-based voice automation platform VIVA, short for Vernacular Intelligent Voice Assistant, which enables corporations to automate 90% of their call center operations powered by Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technology. VIVA covers more than 16 languages and 160 dialects.
– The company announced it has closed a $23 million Series B round to accelerate its growth in domestic and global markets, including the U.S. and Southeast Asia and enhance its voice automation platform.

– FICX (fka CallVU), a San Francisco CA-based CX Automation company, raised $8M in Series B funding.
– The round was led by NAventures with participation from Prytek and Liberty Global Ventures.
– The company intends to use the funds to expand the core platform as well as drive market adoption of its CX Automation tools.

– RaRa Delivery, a logistics company, raised $3.25m in seed funding.
– The round was led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge program and East Ventures.
– Other participants included 500 Startups, Angel Central, GK Plug and Play and angel investors Royston Tay and Yang Bin Kwok.
– RaRa Delivery is a logistics company that relies on a proprietary engine that batches orders and optimizes delivery routes based on data like real-time traffic information.
– It currently operates in Greater Jakarta and is getting ready to expand into five other Indonesian cities this year.
– RaRa Delivery’s goal is to integrate with all major marketplaces in Indonesia, so sellers can offer it as a delivery option to customers.
– It also partners with brands, small e-commerce businesses and seller aggregators.

– Talkdesk, which provides an enterprise contact center platform, announced that it raised $230 million at a post-money valuation of $10 billion.
– The round brings the company’s total raised to $498 million to date.
– Talkdesk currently has over 1,800 customers — Petco, Lemonade, and Sysco among them — and plans to increase the size of its workforce from 1,800 to around 2,200 by 2022.

– yellow.ai raised $78.15M in Series C funding led by WestBridge Capital along with Sapphire Ventures and Salesforce Ventures.
– Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated in this round, which brings total funding raised so far to $102.15M.
– yellow.ai enables enterprises to leverage its proprietary NLP engine and platform to build chatbots and voice bots, in 100+ languages, across 35+ channels that automate functions like Customer Support, Customer Engagement, Conversational Commerce, and Employee Experience.
– The platform comes pre-integrated with enterprise applications like Salesforce, Shopify, Cisco, Avaya, SharePoint, and 100 more.

– Dixa is the leading customer engagement platform, empowering brands to stay connected with customers in a simplified and seamless environment across new and existing touchpoints.
– Dixa has raised $105m in Series C funding led by General Atlantic, with participation from Notion Capital, Project A and Seed Capital.
– Dixa will use the new funds to invest in product development, including potential new acquisitions, and plans to quadruple the engineering team by the end of 2022.
– Dixa has offices in Copenhagen, London, New York, Berlin, Kyiv, Tel Aviv and Melbourne.
– Dixa enables brands to stay connected with customers, wherever they are, in a simplified and seamless environment across new and existing touchpoints such as messaging, live chat, email or voice.
– Dixa is empowering brands to continuously stay true to their values.

– Revolut provides a global financial app for people and businesses.
– The company raised $800m in Series E funding round, which valued the business at $33b.
– Backers included new investors SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Tiger Global Management.
– The company intends to use the funds for ongoing product innovation aimed at meeting customers’ everyday financial needs, such as global transfers, management of savings and insurance, and trading, expansion of its offering to US customers, and entry to India and other international markets.

– Great Question, a customer research platform, raised $2.5m in seed funding.
– The round was led by Funders Club, January Capital, Nomo VC and Twenty-Two Ventures.
– Angel investors Warren Hogarth, Jon Williams, Jason Smale, Robbie Allan also participated.

– Perfitly, a virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) and AI powered virtual fitting room solution that is being integrated into the e-commerce platforms of the nation’s leading retailers, announced the close of a $725K equity round through SeedInvest, a leading crowdfunding platform.
– Perfitly’s solutions reduce returns and increase sales, with substantial financial and sustainability improvements, for online apparel brands and retailers.
– Using Perfitly’s VR/AR solutions, garments are e-stitched to create a 3D replica, including all fabric properties – density, weight, stiffness, stretch, friction, and more.

– Rocketlane is a San Jose, Calif.-based provider of a customer onboarding software platform.
– Company raised $3m in seed funding.
– The round was led by Nexus Venture Partners and Matrix Partners.
– The new investment will be used to expand operations and business reach.

– Whatfix, a “digital adoption” platform that enterprises use to bake user support tools into their software, has raised $90 million in a series D round of funding.
– The company’s latest funding tranche was spearheaded by SoftBank’s Visions Fund 2, with participation from Cisco Investments, Sequoia Capital India, Eight Roads Ventures, F-Prime Capital, and Dragoneer Investment Group.

– Solace, a Portland-based startup that has added digital convenience to the process of planning and facilitating cremation services, has raised $1.745m in seed funding.
– The funding round was led by Portland-based Rogue Venture Partners and other investors include Cascade Seed Fund out of Bend, Ore., and Seattle’s Alliance of Angels.
– Solace plans to use the funds to further expand, make key hires and improve its digital infrastructure.
– Solace charges a flat fee of $895, which is roughly half the average cost of cremation service on the West Coast.

– Cognigy is a Düsseldorf, Germany-based provider of a Conversational AI platform for omnichannel Customer and Employee Service Automation.
– Company raised $44m in Series B funding.
– The round was led by Insight Partners with participation from DN Capital, Global Brain, Nordic Makers, Inventures and Digital Innovation and Growth.
– The new investment will be used to accelerate company’s global customer growth, create new partnerships, and continue to enhance its platform capabilities for companies to speed up enterprise-grade AI adoption.

– ASAPP, Inc. announced today it raised $120m in Series C financing.
– This brings ASAPP’s total funding to $400m and doubles the company’s valuation to $1.6b from its last Series B financing.
– New investors Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC and Dragoneer joined existing investors John Doerr, March Capital, Emergence Capital, Euclidean Capital, HOF Capital, Telstra Ventures and 40 North Ventures.

– Seattle startup Boundless landed $25m funding.
– The company’s technology streamlines how immigrants get in touch with lawyers and file applications for spousal visas and U.S. citizenship.
– It has helped more than 70,000 families through the immigration process.
– The company also dealt with recent workforce changes after it laid off four employees and asked 27 workers to relocate to Las Vegas earlier this year as part of what Wang described as a restructuring.
– Boundless now employs 130 full-time employees across offices in Seattle, Las Vegas, Manila, and Cebu City, Philippines.
– It expects to triple headcount over the next two years.

– AfterShip, a shipment tracking platform, raised $66m in Series B funding.
– The round was led by Tiger Global and joined by Hillhouse Capital’s GL Ventures.
– The company plans to use the funding to expand its sales and customer support teams, and launch new products.
– AfterShip’s core product is its shipment tracking platform, but it also makes apps for shoppers, including self-service returns and package tracking, and sales and marketing tools for merchants that let them get more use out of data from shipments.
– AfterShip’s tools enables merchants to create their own branded tracking pages and notifications.
– Other features allow them to track the performance of different carriers, create email marketing campaigns and increase customer retention.
– Its CRM capabilities help AfterShip differentiate from other shipment tracking aggregator providers.

– Aclaimant raises $15m in Series B financing led by Next Coast Ventures.
– The company’s monthly active users in the platform and system usage increased by over 400% in 2020.
– Aclaimant will use the new funds to double down on product innovation, increase hiring across all departments, accelerate client acquisition and sales as well as marketing and partnership development.
– Aclaimant will continue to add key talent across the risk management spectrum to grow and expand its in-house subject matter expertise.
– Aclaimant is designed to help organizations actively manage risk while improving the claims management process.

– Uniphore from Palo Alto develops a Conversational Service Automation (CSA) platform.
– Series D $140m funding round brings the total funds invested in the company to $210m.
– The round was led by Sorenson Capital Partners with participation from Serena Capital, Sanabil Investments, Cisco Investments, March Capital Partners, National Grid Partners, Chiratae Ventures, Iron Pillar Fund, and Sistema Capital.
– The new investment will be used to extend the company’s technology and market leadership in AI, Automation and Machine learning across the enterprise.

– Cresta, an AI-powered platform that offers real-time support to help customer service agents respond to inquiries on calls or in chats, has raised $50 million in a series B round of funding.
– The company’s latest investment, which was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Allen & Company, and Porsche Ventures, comes after a year of growth that saw its revenues quadruple.
– It’s difficult to read too much into any first-year revenue growth metrics, but it’s clear that companies are hankering for technology that helps them optimize their customer-facing operations.
– Contact centers have proven fertile ground for AI, with a slew of companies emerging to offer their own take on how automation can improve companies’ interactions with their customers.

– Second Closet is a self-storage company based in Toronto, Canada.
– Company raised CAD$20m in equity funding.
– The round was led by Whitecap Venture Partners alongside new investor Intact Ventures with participation from MIG, Michael Hyatt, and Cowie Capital Partners.
– The new investment will be used to accelerate its B2B market development, expand its product development team, round out its leadership through new executive hires, and grow the team in other parts of the business.

– Centrical, a startup developing an employee engagement and performance management platform, today announced that it raised $32 million in funding led by Intel Capital.
– The funds, which bring Centrical’s total raised to date to $64 million, will be put toward product R&D as Centrical looks to acquire new customers.
– During the pandemic, as shelter-in-place orders and office closures force employees to work from home, companies are increasingly experimenting with or adopting work quality monitoring products.
– According to a June study by Gartner, 26% of HR leaders report having used some form of software or technology to track remote workers since the start of the health crisis.
– It’s an uptick driven in part by concerns over performance dips that could arise from work-from-home setups.

– Laundryheap, a London, UK-based on-demand laundry and dry cleaning platform, raised $3.5m in Series A funding.
– The round was led by Sova VC, joined by the SidebySide Partnership.
– The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand its business reach globally, following growth to new markets during 2020, including the USA, Singapore, Sweden and across the Middle East.

– Opiniion is a software company based in Lindon, Utah.
– The company raised $3m in funding.
– The round was led by the Frazier Group, with participation from RET Ventures, AIM Ventura Capital and Tamarak Capital Partners.
– The funding will be used to continue to expand operations and business reach.

– Playvox is a leading CRM-connected omnichannel contact center provider of agent optimization solutions.
– The company raised $25m in funding.
– Five Elms Capital led the round.
– The company also acquired Agyle Time, a provider of cloud-native digital-first workforce management (WFM) software for contact centers.

– Cognigy secured funding from Global Brain, one of Japan’s largest venture capital firms.
– The funding will enable Cognigy to capitalize on its position as a leader in Conversational AI and customer service automation in high-growth markets such as the Asia-Pacific region.
– As customer expectations continue to evolve, Cognigy’s top priority is to equip contact centers with AI-first technology to resolve customer issues at unmatched speed and consistency.
– Its robust Conversational AI platform easily integrates into existing tools to successfully scale support and permeate more channels for customers.
– Built on the premise that Conversational AI could rival the power of customer service agents with the same human-like quality at lower costs, Cognigy aims to catalyze this unique convergence of conversation and processes.