Skip to content

PolyAI raises $50m for call centre voice assistants

PolyAI
Image credit: PolyAI

PolyAI, a London-based startup developing AI-generated voices for use in call centres, has closed a $50m (£39.4m) funding round valuing it close to $500m.

Founded in 2017 as a spinout from the University of Cambridge, PolyAI lists Volkswagen, Marriott and Caesar’s Entertainment among its clients for its conversational virtual assistants.

The company’s co-founder and CEO Nikola Mrkšić previously worked at Apple as a machine learning researcher in Cambridge working with the team behind the Siri virtual assistant.

The Series C funding round, first reported by the Financial Times, was led by Hedosophia and NVentures – the VC arm of NVIDIA. It featured participation from existing investors Khosla Ventures and Point72 Ventures.

Mrkšić told the FT:We want to make people fall in love with voice assistants because [calling] is still the main way people interact with businesses. It’s been very sticky and has stayed past a digital transformation elsewhere.”

PolyAI has previously raised $66m from investors, according to Crunchbase.

According to the firm’s latest accounts, it generated almost £3m in revenue for the year ended January 2023, though high costs meant it ultimately lost £10.9m. PolyAI said that US companies represent 70% of its revenue.

The major funding round follows a series of boosts for the British AI industry last week, including a $1.05bn funding round for autonomous vehicle software firm Wayve, a pledge from US firm CoreWeave to spend £1bn on UK AI infrastructure and the opening of Scale AI’s European headquarters in London.

Amelia Armour, partner on Amadeus Capital Partner’s Early Stage Team, long-term investor and board observer at PolyAI, said: “It’s been a very strong month so far for the AI sector in the UK, so to see a company we have followed and supported since its inception at Cambridge University expand internationally, attract investment, and most importantly roll out its tech to large customers is very exciting.”

Topics

Register for Free

Get daily updates and enjoy an ad-reduced experience.

Already have an account? Log in