Natter lands $23M to encourage employees to open up about their organizations through AI video interviews – News

Conversation intelligence startup Natter said today it has raised $23 million in funding to replace the traditional surveys and focus groups used by organizations to obtain insights from their employees.

The round was led by Renegade Partners and saw participation from Kindred Capital, Costanoa Ventures, Rackhouse Ventures, Village Global and Asymmetric Capital Partners, plus a number of angel investors.

Natter, officially known as Tenth Chapter Ltd., has built an artificial intelligence-based system that enables organizations to interview their employees at scale. Its goal is to capture the sentiments of employees, team members and customers at scale in order to generate useful insights that can inform strategies around sales, corporate policies and elsewhere, the company explained. By interviewing thousands of employees simultaneously, Natter says it’s able to capture insights at a speed and depth that far surpasses traditional techniques for generating feedback, such as surveys and research interviews.

Co-founder and CEO Charlie Woodward said that every person inside an organization has something important to say about it, and believes that leaders need to hear it. “The response from organizations like Accenture, ServiceNow and Philip Morris has shown us just how urgent that need is,” he added.

Natter’s internal research shows that AI-generated insights from conversations outperform interviews, surveys and focus groups by a wide distance. For instance, one customer reported that just 40 minutes of conversations yielded more insights than 500 hours of research interviews. At the same time, it uncovered between 97% and 147% more themes than focus groups, surfacing issues inside the organization that its leaders were totally unaware of.

Woodward explained that one of the reasons for this is that employees generally feel “more psychologically safe” sharing their candid opinions of an organization when engaging with in conversation with AI. In official interviews where they sit face-to-face with a senior staff member, employees may be less willing to speak up about certain issues that affect them, for a variety of reasons, but when they’re chatting with AI, they’re much more comfortable discussing sensitive topics. That’s because the startup takes privacy very seriously, and reassures every employee that their opinions will remain anonymous, so there’s no risk of getting into trouble for complaining or moaning about something.

Accenture Plc Head of Talent Stephen Wroblewski summed up Natter’s capabilities, likening it to being able to talk to 10,000 people in a single day. “That’s why we need Natter, so we don’t have to spend weeks and months running hundreds of interviews and focus groups, and then spend even longer reviewing the different comments and transcripts to understand what matters,” he said.

The breadth of insights Natter delivers through conversation intelligence has gotten the attention of a growing number of organizations, sparking rapid growth for the startup. In 2024, it was able to grow its revenue by four times, and the year after it increased by five times, both off undisclosed bases.

The growth was driven by its expansion into the U.S. According to Natter, 80% of its customers are now based in the U.S., which is why it recently relocated its headquarters from London to New York City. Going forward, the company hopes to accelerate its momentum, using the funds from today’s round to expand its engineering, data and product teams.

Renegade Partners co-founder and Managing Director Renata Quintini said employees have struggled to make their voices heard through outdated surveys and research. “Natter’s purpose-built infrastructure for real-time video capture and its unmatched longitudinal dataset creates AI-native, defensible insights where companies urgently need them, across sales, strategy and HR,” she said. “It’s poised to redefine how enterprises listen, learn and act.”

Image: Natter