Call center chatbot startup PolyAI raises $86M at a $750M valuation – News

London-based artificial intelligence startup PolyAI Ltd. said today it has raised $86 million in late-stage funding at a $750 million valuation for its agentic chatbot platform that automates customer interactions for casinos, banks, hospitals and other enterprises.

Today’s Series D round was led by Georgian, Hedosophia and Khosla Ventures. Also participating were Nvidia Corp.’s venture capital arm NVentures, plus the British Business Bank, Citi Ventures, Squarepoint Ventures, Sands Capital, Zendesk Ventures and Point72 Ventures. The round brings its total amount raised so far to more than $200 million.

The company was spun out of the University of Cambridge after developing AI assistants for call centers that can guide human customers through various enquiries and handle millions of calls daily. Moreover, it claims, its call center agents are almost indistinguishable from human voices.

PolyAI co-founder and Chief Executive Nikola Mrksic said the company’s vision has always been to make AI voices sound so realistic that every enterprise wants to use them. “PolyAI started with a simple idea: enterprises should sound human,” he explained. “We turned that idea into reality, and it led to something far greater: the emergence of the agentic enterprise. This is a living, breathing system that understands what your customers, employees and AI agents are doing in real time.”

The startup said it’s now handling customer calls about power outages for California’s largest energy firm, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., as well as inquiries about new and lost credit cards for the Italian bank UniCredit S.p.A. and restaurant bookings for Las Vegas casinos such as Caesars and Golden Nugget. Mrksic told Forbes in an interview that voice AI isn’t just about reducing costs by replacing human agents in call centers, but helping enterprises to drive revenue by automating tasks that aren’t economical for humans to handle. “Our AI picks up every phone call, they always book you in and they never forget to upsell you,” he said. “It helps companies become the best version of themselves.”

Mrksic, who previously worked on Apple Inc.’s Siri voice assistant, said the realism of PolyAI’s voices and their flexible nature has enabled PolyAI to grow its sales significantly over the last year. He also told Forbes that the company is on track to double its annualized recurring revenue in the financial year to more than $40 million, with sales to U.S.-based clients expected to triple.

Because PolyAI is based in the U.K., it’s legally required to publish financial records, and these show that its revenue grew from $8.9 million in the 12-month period ending Jan. 31, 2024, to just over $15 million by the end of the same period this year. PolyAI is rivaled by a number of U.S. voice AI startups, and they have also attracted massive amounts of venture capital in recent months.

For instance, Sierra Technologies Inc. closed on a bumper $350 million funding round in September that increased its valuation to over $10 billion, while San Francisco-based Decagon AI Inc. got $131 million in a June round that valued it at $1.5 billion. It faces competition in Europe too, with Paris-based Parloa GmbH raising $120 million at a $1 billion valuation in May.

One of the main differences between PolyAI and its rivals is that it develops its own large language models, which is what gives it an edge in terms of realism, Mrksic said. Its competitors simply plug into LLMs from companies such as OpenAI Group PBC or voice-specific AI startups such as Eleven Labs Inc.

PolyAI’s $750 million valuation is based on a 25-times revenue multiple, which is relatively conservative compared with some of its U.S. competitors, whose valuations are based on 100-times multiples. But in any case, each of them is way north of traditional listed software companies, where valuations tend to be based on multiples of around eight-times revenue.

The VCs backing PolyAI are clear about the generational opportunity of AI, however. Emily Walsh, lead investor at Georgian, said this is the second time she has returned as an investor in the startup. “For the world’s largest brands, customer service is no longer just a cost center, it’s a massive opportunity for value creation,” she said. “PolyAI’s ability to deploy lifelike voice agents at enterprise scale unlocks significant savings and revenue.”

PolyAI plans to spend money on further developing the proprietary technology that powers its Agent Studio platform and expand its go-to-market teams.

Image: PolyAI