Motion lands $38M in funding to expand its agentic AI suite for smaller businesses – News

Agentic artificial intelligence startup Motion, officially known as Nexusbird Inc., said today it has closed on a $38 million Series C round of funding that brings its total amount raised to date to $75 million and its valuation to $550 million.

Today’s round was led by Scale Venture Partners and saw participation from a host of others, including existing backers HOF Capital, 468 Capital, SignalFire and Y Combinator, and new investors Valor Equity Partners, Fellows Fund, Leonis Capital and more than a dozen angel investors.

Founded in 2019 by its Chief Executive Harry Qi, a former hedge fund analyst, Motion started out by building an AI-powered calendar and task management application, and got its big break when it was accepted into Y Combinator’s Winter 2020 batch. The company slowly but surely grew its customer base over the next six years, until pivoting in May with the rise of AI agents.

That month, it debuted a suite of AI agents that are designed to perform very specific tasks that can help to automate business processes at SMBs, which lack the multimillion-dollar budgets required to develop their own AI products. The suite caught on like wildfire, and in just four months Motion was able to grow its business-to-business customer base to more than 10,000, while its annual recurring revenue soared to more than $10 million.

In an interview with News, Qi said that one of the main advantages of Motion’s agentic AI suite is that each of the agents is deeply integrated with the others. So the executive assistant agent, which automates note taking, scheduling and email replies on behalf of company executives and other professionals, knows exactly what the other agents, including a sales representative, project manager and marketing assistant, are doing.

Qi is nothing if not ambitious, telling News that he believes there’s an opportunity for Motion to become “the next Microsoft.” He explained that the company’s strategy is to build all of the key productivity agents and bundle them in one package.

That differs from the current way of doing things, where most organizations purchase separate point AI solutions that don’t integrate with one another. In contrast, Motion’s agents work together as a cohesive team, mirroring the collaborative nature of human employees

Integration is a big thing for Motion, and its agents also play nicely with third-party software tools such as Salesforce, Microsoft Teams and Slack, so users can call them up no matter where they’re working.

The rapid adoption of Motion’s AI agents underscores the insatiable demand for SMBs to access the same kind of automation tools being widely adopted by large enterprises, so they can enhance their productivity and improve their operational efficiency.

Motion’s growth is aided by its competitive pricing, with prices starting at $29 per month per seat, with 1,000 credits and a limited number of agent functions, rising to $600 per month for 25 seats, with 250,000 credits and the full set of agentic capabilities. For businesses that require more seats or credits, Motion can negotiate a custom rate.

Stacey Bishop of Scale Venture Partners, who will take a seat on Motion’s board of directors, said the company reminds her of HubSpot Inc. during its early days, with its laser focus on building a product for SMBs before turning its attention to bigger pickings. “When I spoke with Motion’s customers during due diligence, it was clear that its agentic work suite solves a very real problem,” she pointed out. “These businesses want to use AI to run better, but they don’t know where to start. Motion makes that leap possible.”

With today’s funding, Motion plans to invest in research and development to expand the capabilities of its agentic suite, double down on its marketing push and forge strategic partnerships with further integrations in mind.

Images: Motion