Conversational AI platform Parloa<\/a> has nabbed $66 million in a Series B round of funding, a year after the German startup raised $21 million<\/a> from a swathe of European investors to propel its international growth.<\/p>\n The company is focusing on the U.S. market in particular, where Parloa opened a New York office last year \u2014 it says this hub helped it sign up \u201cseveral Fortune 200 companies\u201d in the region. For its latest instalment, Parloa has secured Altimeter Capital<\/a> as lead backer, a U.S.-based VC firm notable for its previous investments in the likes of Uber, Airbnb, Snowflake, Twilio, and HubSpot.<\/p>\n AI and automation in customer service is nothing new, but with a new wave of large language models<\/a> (LLMs) and generative AI infrastructure, truly smart \u201cconversational\u201d AI (i.e. not dumb chatbots) is again firmly in investors\u2019 focus. Established players continue to raise substantial sums, such as Kore.ai which closed a chunky $150 million round of funding<\/a> a few months ago from big-name backers such as Nvidia. Elsewhere, entrepreneur and former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor launched a new customer experience platform called Sierra<\/a>, built around the concept of \u201cAI agents,\u201d with north of $100 million in VC backing.<\/p>\n Parloa is well-positioned to capitalize on the \u201cAI with everything\u201d hype that has hit fever pitch these past couple of years, as companies seek new ways to improve efficiency through automation.<\/p>\n Founded out of Germany in 2018, Parloa has already secured high-profile customers such as European insurance giant Swiss Life<\/a> and sporting goods retailer Decathlon<\/a>, which use the Parloa platform to automate customer communications including emails and instant messaging.<\/p>\n However, \u201cvoice\u201d is where co-founder and CEO Malte Kosub reckons Parloa stands out.<\/p>\n \u201cOur strategy has always been centered around \u2018voice first,\u2019 the most critical and impactful facet of the customer experience,\u201d Kosub told TechCrunch over email. \u201cAs a result, Parloa\u2019s AI-based voice conversations sound more human than any other solution.\u201d<\/p>\n Parloa platform Image Credits<\/strong>: Parloa<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Co-founder and CTO Stefan Ostwald says that AI has been a core part of Parloa\u2019s DNA since its inception six years ago, using a mix of proprietary and open source LLMs to train models for speech-to-text use-cases.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve trained a variety of speech-to-text models on phone audio quality and customer service use cases, developed a custom telephony infrastructure to minimize latency \u2014 a key challenge in voice automation \u2014 and a proprietary LLM agent framework for customer service,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Prior to now, Parloa had raised around $25 million, the bulk of which arrived via its Series A round last year. And with another $66 million in the bank, it\u2019s well-financed to double down on both its European and U.S. growth, with Kosub noting that it has tripled its revenue in each of the past three years.<\/p>\n \u201cWe successfully entered the U.S. market in 2023 \u2014 we\u2019ve always had confidence in the excellence and competitiveness of our product, however the overwhelming and rapid success it achieved in the U.S. surpassed everyone\u2019s expectations,\u201d Kosub said.<\/p>\n Aside form lead investor Altimeter, Parloa\u2019s Series B round included cash injections from EQT Ventures, Newion, Senovo, Mosaic Ventures and La Familia Growth. Today\u2019s funding brings Parloa\u2019s total capital raised to-date to $98 million, following its $21 million Series A funding round led by EQT Ventures in 2023.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Parloa](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Platform.jpg\")
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