SINGAPORE – AI Rudder, the leading voice artificial intelligence start-up, today announced it has closed a US$50 million Series B funding round, bringing total funding in the last 12 months to US$60 million. New investors Tiger Global, Coatue, Cathay Innovation, First Plus and VenturesLab participated and were joined by previous investors Sequoia Capital India and Huashan Capital.
Founded in 2019, AI Rudder develops advanced voice AI technology to help businesses solve B2C communication challenges across a range of different industries, including banking and finance, fintech, insurance and e-commerce. Today, more than 200 companies around the world use its platform to supercharge their customer experience by augmenting human agents with AI voice assistants to maximise profits, efficiency and scalability.
“Advancements in machine and deep learning technologies are opening new possibilities for Voice AI to be more human-like. This fresh infusion of capital will support continuous enhancements to our suite of products, enabling our clients to deliver more frictionless digital experiences to their customers. The ubiquity of technology and SaaS has allowed us to impact businesses across continents – in countries like Mexico, Kenya, Australia and beyond. We’re excited to lead this next phase of growth into new territories and industries to supercharge omnichannel customer experiences for our clients,” said Kun Wu, Co-Founder and Managing Director, AI Rudder.
Global demand for responsive customer service brought about by the pandemic has skyrocketed growth for the company. Over the last year, AI Rudder experienced a surge of growth, with an impressive 400% year-on-year increase in revenue. Additionally, the company’s Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) also increased three times in 2021 due to a growing client roster.
“We have been looking to invest in companies using AI to reimagine the customer experience. Through its global first approach and rapidly growing TAM, AI Rudder’s position within the rapidly growing global conversational AI marketplace fit squarely into our thesis,” said Nicolas du Cray, Partner, Cathay Innovation. “Once we discovered that a number of our portfolio companies rely heavily on their technology to deliver game changing customer experiences – we had to back the company. We are incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to help AI Rudder as they revolutionise the customer experience for the world’s brands.”
To power this next phase of growth, the company will use the proceeds from the investment round to double its headcount, enabling job creation for highly specialised and sophisticated roles in technology across the region. The fresh funds will also be used to build on the company’s strong growth, including serving more clients and increasing its global presence. Currently, the platform supports more than 15 languages including English, Bahasa, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Vietnamese, and plans are in place to add Arabic, Cantonese, French, German, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese to better support multinational companies.
