Clinc, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based conversational AI company, announced it has raised $52 million in Series B funding. This funding round was led by new investor Insight Partners. DFJ Growth and existing investors Drive Capital and Hyde Park Venture Partners also joined this round.
In conjunction with this round, Insight Partners’ Managing Director Jeff Lieberman is joining Clinc’s board of directors and Randy Glein of DFJ Growth is joining the board of advisors.
Ever since Clinc launched its first product in 2016, the company signed dozens of partnerships in the conversational AI category space. And the company saw 300% year-over-yer revenue growth in 2018 with expectations that it will triple again this year.
“We’ve had phenomenal growth and built unbelievable momentum in a very short period of time,” said Clinc CEO Jason Mars. “Now we’re adding more world-class investors to support our growing team as we work to accelerate the pace of innovation and to reshape the conversational AI landscape, one industry at a time.”
What does Clinc do? It builds virtual assistants and conversational AI experiences for some of the largest financial institutions in the world such as Barclays, USAA, and Isbank. And Clinc’s AI platform is used by automakers like Ford, restaurants, and healthcare companies. Through these partnerships, Clinc is now accessible to more than 30 million users.
“We are thrilled to welcome Clinc into the Insight portfolio and partner to help global companies deploy conversational AI to scale their businesses,” added Lieberman. “At Insight we look for companies utilizing the most innovative technological advancements and Clinc has shown this with their conversational AI experiences and virtual assistant solutions that mimic human intelligence. We look forward to working together to further Clinc’s growth and scale their business.”
Including this funding round, Clinc has now raised $60 million. And this $52 million round is considered the single largest investment in the history of conversational AI startups.
“We are delighted to be partnering with Clinc to bring conversational AI to the world,” noted Glein. “Voice-based computing has been on our radar for several years as legacy speech recognition and IVR solutions have not kept pace with demands of modern enterprises. Clinc has emerged as a new generation leader by making true conversational, AI-assisted voice computing accessible to enterprises that make customer experience their top priority. Clinc is unlocking a voice-driven platform that is quickly taking us into the future of responsive computing.”
The new capital will be used for investing in product innovation, expanding the Clinc team to reach 140 employees by the end of the year, and opening a new 26,000 square foot office in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
“Clinc proves once again that a small team of dedicated engineers can create a breakthrough product against the large incumbent companies. Clinc also demonstrates that many of the most technologically advanced products are coming out of the Midwest,” explained Drive Capital partner and co-founder Mark Kvamme.
Clinc’s conversational AI experiences and virtual assistant solutions platform can be applied to a variety of verticals. And its language-, geography- and vertical-agnostic technology can be scaled to a wide range of applications and integrated into a variety of channels, devices/systems including APIs, digital in-store kiosks, drive-thrus, infotainment systems in vehicles, mobile apps, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Facebook Messenger, etc.
