– Blackbird.AI, an AI-powered platform designed to combat disinformation, announced that it closed a $10 million series A funding round led by Dorilton Ventures with participation from NetX, Generation Ventures, Trousdale Ventures, StartFast Ventures, and individual angel investors.
– The proceeds, which bring the company’s total raised to $11.87 million, will be used to support ramp-ups in hiring and product lines and launch new features and capabilities for corporate and national security customers, according to cofounder and CEO Wasim Khaled.
– The cost of disinformation and digital manipulation threats to organizations and governments is estimated to be $78 billion annually, the University of Baltimore and Cheq Cybersecurity found in a report.

– Blackbird.AI is a NYC-based AI-driven Disinformation Intelligence Platform.
– The company closed a $10m Series A funding.
– The round was led by Dorilton Ventures, with participation from new investors including Generation Ventures, Trousdale Ventures, StartFast Ventures and Richard Clarke. Existing investor NetX also participated.
– The new investment will be used to scale up the engineering and sales teams, fast-track new product development, and accelerate platform adoption by a global client base.

– Sorcero, a natural language processing platform, raised $10m in Series A funding.
– The round was led by CityRock Venture Partners, the growth fund of H/L Ventures, and Harmonix Fund co-led the round and were joined by new investors Rackhouse, Mighty Capital and Leawood VC, as well as existing investors, Castor Ventures and WorldQuant Ventures.
– The company plans to invest in talent in both engineering and on the commercial side.

– Explosion, a company that has combined an open source machine learning library with a set of commercial developer tools, announced a $6m Series A.
– The round was led by SignalFire, and the company reported that today’s investment represents 5% of its value.
– Oana Olteanu from SignalFire will be joining the board under the terms of the deal, which includes warrants of $12m in additional investment at the same price.
– The company started in 2016 when Montani met her co-founder, Matthew Honnibal in Berlin where he was working on the spaCy open source machine learning library. Since then, that open source project has been downloaded over 40 million times.

– 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.

– Abtrace is a London UK-based healthtech startup.
– The company raised £2.1M in seed funding.
– The round was led by Faber with participation from Ganexa Capital.
– The new investment will be used to roll out the technology to new GP practices across the UK and expand their engineering and data science teams.

– Channels is announcing a seed round of $520k led by Sahra Growth Capital, to bring their total funding to $571.8k.
– Started by Siddharth Kaul, Elan Rosen, and Ibrahim Mohammed, Channels helps organizations navigate through physical work, starting in the event space.
– Jamal Al-Barrak, the Managing Partner of Sahra Growth Capital, has high hopes for Channels, already citing successful clients such as Marriott Hotels and Holiday Inn: “Channels has a bright future to disrupt the event space and eventually transition into sectors such as retail. They are pioneering the mobile-friendly approach to physical communication with big players already taking note.”

– Senseforth.ai announced a $14m investment from Fractal, a global provider of AI and analytics solutions to Fortune 500 companies.
– This investment will help Senseforth.ai scale and expand its footprint across Fractal’s clients globally.
– This investment also strengthens Fractal‘s conversational AI offerings as it advances on its mission to power every human decision in the enterprise.

– ConverseNow, a startup developing a platform that automates orders at quick service drive-thru windows, announced that it closed a $15 million series A funding round led by Craft Ventures, with participation from LiveOak Venture Partners, Tensility Venture Partners, Knoll Ventures, Bala Investments, 2048 Ventures, Bridge Investments, Moneta Ventures, and angel investors.
– The proceeds bring the company’s total raised to date to $18.3 million, which CEO Vinay Shukla says will be put toward scaling and creating technologies like “digital line-busting” — some of which will roll out later this year.

– Translated, an Italy and US-based company that pioneered the use of artificial intelligence to support professional translators, announces that the world-leading private investment house Ardian has invested $25 million, leading a $30 million investment round.
– Translated is an end-to-end translation platform that combines its renowned proprietary adaptive neural machine translation software ModernMT with its network of 200 000 engaged linguists.
– Over the last several years, the company has experienced a consistent 30 percent organic growth rate year-on-year.
– Thanks to this human-machine symbiosis, Translated offerings have been constantly improving. Today Translated can serve global tech platforms including Airbnb, Google and Uber as well as small and medium-sized businesses.

– Wonderflow announced that it raised $20m in a funding round led by Klass Capital.
– The capital, which brings the company’s total raised to $25m to date, will be used to grow Wondeflow’s teams in Europe and North America to offer “strong support to enterprise customers,” according to CEO Riccardo Osti.
– Wonderflow occupies a category of tools, VoC, that’s attempting to reverse the trend in customer experience.
– Wonderflow was founded in 2014 by Italian entrepreneurs Osti, Giovanni Gaglione, and Michele Ruini, all of whom met in Trento.
– Wonderflow used an extensive data lake of indexed, cleaned public feedback from hundreds of thousands of products to create machine learning models around business use cases.

– Primer is a Natural Language Processing (NLP) company based in San Francisco, CA.
– Company closed a $110M Series C funding round.
– The round was led by Lee Fixel’s Addition with participation from Steadfast, Sands Capital, and Hank Crumpton, former Ambassador-at-Large and US Coordinator for Counterterrorism.
– The new funding will be used to expand operations, stepping up recruiting efforts both in the US and globally, and its business reach.

– Aveni Detect from Edinburgh, Scotland, UK developed a speech analytics platform for financial services.
– The company raised £1.1m in funding.
– The round was led by TRICAPITAL Angel syndicate, supported by Scottish Enterprise’s Growth Investments, Old College Capital and Wallace Equity.
– The company intends to use the funds to launch an AI tool to help identify vulnerable customers, move beyond financial services into other regulated industries, whilst building a team to support its UK expansion.

– Super.AI, a data process automation startup, raised $12m in funding.
– The round was joined by HV Capital, NFX, Mosaic Ventures, and PSL Ventures.
– Total funding to date is $21.6m.
– The company declined to provide revenue metrics.

– Verbit announced the close of a $157 million series D round that the company says will bolster its product R&D and hiring efforts.
– CEO Tom Livne, who noted that the raise brings the company’s post-money valuation to more than $1 billion, said that the capital will also support the company’s geographic expansion as it prepares for an initial public offering.
– Sapphire Ventures led the 110-employee Verbit’s series C round with participation Third Point, More Capital, Lion Investment Partners, ICON fund as well as existing investors such as Stripes, Vertex Ventures, HV Capital, Oryzn Capital, and ClalTech participated.

– 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.

– Breinify, a startup working to apply data science to personalization, raised $11m funding.
– The funding was led by Gutbrain Ventures and PBJ Capital with participation from Streamlined Ventures, CXO Fund, Amino Capital, Startup Capital Ventures and Sterling Road.
– The company is growing fast and has 24 employees, up from 10 last year.

– Hyro is a conversational AI company.
– The company raised $10.5m in Series A funding.
– Spero Ventures led the round and was joined by Twilio and Mindset Ventures, and existing investors Hanaco Ventures, Spider Capital, and Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator.
– The company plans to use the funding to hire top talent across all departments as it continues to build out its Adaptive Communications Platform to enhance its customers’ web, mobile and call center solutions while also expanding its presence across key industries where it is already experiencing strong traction.

– Laiye Raises $50M in Series C+ Funding.
– The round was co-led by the Ping An Global Voyager Fund and Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Industry Equity Investment Fund with participation from Lightspeed China Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital China and Wu Capital.
– The company intends to expand globally and develop products, enhance its RPA offering with native AI capability, compatibility with more operating systems like Linux and Android, deploy on all major cloud platforms, and recruit top talent.

– GumGum is a global contextual advertising technology company based in Santa Monica, California.
– The company raised $75m in funding.
– Goldman Sachs Growth joined existing investors Upfront Ventures, NewView Capital, and Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.
– The new investment will be used to accelerate the adoption of its contextual intelligence advertising product suite and expand investments in key international markets.

– Datapeople, a startup that sells software designed to make recruiting more equitable, announced that it has raised $8 million across two funding events, including a $5 million round in mid-2020.
– The company, which counts Uncork Capital, NextView Ventures and First Round Capital as backers, does two things. Its initial product, what Datapeople calls “Language Analytics,” scans job postings, offering suggested edits to customers to help them attract a more diverse group of applicants.

– 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.

– Sherpa, a startup from Bilbao, Spain that was an early mover in building a voice-based digital assistant and predictive search for Spanish-speaking audiences, has raised some more funding to double down on a newer focus for the startup: building out privacy-first AI services for enterprise customers.
– The company has closed $8.5m funding.
– The funding is coming from Marcelo Gigliani, a managing partner at Apax Digital; Alex Cruz, the chairman of British Airways; and Spanish investment firms Mundi Ventures and Ekarpen.
– The funding is an extension to the $15m Sherpa has already raised in a Series A.
– From what I understand, Sherpa is currently also raising a larger Series B.

– Sensi.ai raises $3.5M Seed Round for its AI Quality of Care Management Platform in Senior Care Environments
– Flint Capital led the round
– The investment will support Sensi’s continued market expansion across US in-home care agencies and senior care facilities.
– The platform provides audio analytics-based insight that helps eliminate blind-spots and enables care agencies with complete visibility and transparency into each hour of care without having to rely on neither the caregiver nor the client’s input.
– Sensi enables agencies, for the first time ever, to obtain data-based insight into each client’s care needs and ensure that their caregivers are best equipped to answer those needs in the highest quality manner. Agency managers can now obtain an objective overview and take simple actions that drive staff and client retention, mitigate liability claims and help with new client acquisition.

– Emotive, a text marketing platform, raised $50m in Series B funding.
– The round was led by CRV and joined by Mucker Capital, TenOneTen Ventures and Stripes.
– It brings Emotive to a valuation of $400m.
– The company plans to continue developing the product, to grow its headcount to more than 200 people and to open offices in Atlanta and Boston.
– Eventually, it could also expand beyond texting.

– Impact Analytics has raised $11M led by Argentum to accelerate growth
– The company’s industry-leading, next-generation AI-driven technology platform powers SaaS solutions aimed at optimizing the forecasting, planning and merchandising functions for retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers.
– Impact’s solutions are deployed at leading retailers, including Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Puma, JoAnn and Belk.
– Several large private equity firms are actively encouraging their portfolio companies in the retail sector to adopt Impact’s solutions.
– Impact’s decisioning systems also enhance retailers’ sustainability efforts by helping them make more precise merchandising and allocation decisions, reducing waste and their carbon footprint.
– Impact Analytics was founded in 2013 by CEO Shachar Shemesh and CTO Lior Zalmanson.

– 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.