ultimate.ai Raises $20 Million Series A Funding For Its AI-Powered Customer Service Automation Platform

Accelerated by the shift towards digital commerce, ultimate.ai acts as an intelligent layer for customer service teams by managing repetitive tasks and reducing workload, and is relied upon by the likes of Deezer, Telia, Footasylum, and Finnair

ultimate.ai, the Helsinki and Berlin-based company building the world’s leading virtual customer service agent, has raised $20M in Series A funding, led by OMERS Ventures and with participation from Felicis Ventures and existing investors HV Capital and Maki.vc.

The funding follows a year of massive growth and momentum for ultimate.ai. Digital commerce took center stage in 2020, driving strong tailwinds for technologies that enable great customer experiences at scale. The company has tripled its ARR over the last 12 months (for the second year in a row) and has also tripled its headcount, and with this large Series A round is set for even more explosive growth.

“We’ve seen market maturity accelerate,” says Reetu Kainulainen, CEO and Co-founder of ultimate.ai. “After the first-generation of ineffective chatbots, businesses today really know what they’re looking for. Customer service automation has leap-frogged from simple FAQs to full process automation, across all digital channels. We’re really seeing the A-players emerge.”

ultimate.ai’s mission is to empower brands to drive better customer experiences through automation. The company’s no-code platform makes powerful AI technology accessible, and puts it in the hands of customer service teams, to orchestrate their operations to deliver instant resolutions around the clock, and uniquely, in every language.

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Integrated within the world’s leading CRM providers, including Salesforce and Zendesk, ultimate.ai’s virtual agent talks to customers, manages tickets, works in back office systems, escalates to other team members, and offers a multitude of other features.

The holistic, AI-first solution automates up to 80% of support interactions, freeing agents from repetitive requests. Rather than teams needing to replace their existing system, ultimate.ai can instead supercharge current workflows and set ups.

Jambu Palaniappan, Managing Partner at OMERS Ventures, will join the board. Aydin Senkut, Founder and Managing Partner of Felicis Ventures, will join as an investor, alongside former Head of Airbnb for Business Mark McCabe, and former EVP Global Sales at payment giant Adyen, Thijn Lamers.

“The new funding comes at a time of massive growth for us,” comments Reetu Kainulainen. “This will enable us to keep investing in a category-defining product. We have been uniquely placed to provide crucial support for businesses that have experienced a surge in online customers, and the years of foundation building, product development, and our team culture have enabled us to ride the tailwind of the COVID-19.”

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OMERS Ventures Managing Partner Jambu Palaniappan adds: “ultimate.ai’s growth has been truly spectacular, underpinned by its world-class team that is headed up by founders with a strong vision and unrivalled knowledge of AI. There are numerous chatbot companies out there but ultimate.ai represents something much bigger because at its core is an automation company with massive potential. We look forward to working with Sarah, Reetu, Jaakko, and Markus as they expand internationally and advance their deep product capabilities even further.”

The funding marks another milestone on ultimate.ai’s explosive growth journey. Currently, the company supports customer service departments of leading industry players, including companies such as Deezer, Telia, Footasylum and Finnair.

ultimate.ai was founded in November 2016 in Finland by COO Sarah Al-Hussaini, CEO Reetu Kainulainen, CSO Jaakko Pasanen, and CTO Markus Rautio. The founders developed their entire deep learning stack in-house, enabling fully language-agnostic technology without the need for a translation layer. The multilingual capability is ultimate.ai’s cornerstone, driving continued growth across Europe and North America.

ultimate.ai will use this latest funding to advance its AI-powered automation platform, which currently powers customer interactions in over 20 languages, and to expand to North America and further throughout Europe. The current funding round brings the 4 year old company’s total capital raised to more than $25M.

Aydin Senkut, Founder and Managing Partner of Felicis Ventures, comments: “The customer service industry is undergoing an automation revolution. In ultimate.ai, we saw a vision that’s bold enough to lead the way. We believe that, just in the same way that category leaders have defined marketing and sales automation, ultimate.ai will do the same for customer service.”

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