The demand for conversational AI, particularly chatbots, is at an all-time high, largely driven by the popularity of solutions like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Last year, Gartner projected that by 2026, 10% of customer-agent interactions will be automated, a significant leap from the mere 1.6% in 2022.
As a result, the market for tools to develop conversational AI is booming, with Future Market Insights estimating its value to soar to $47.6 billion by 2033, up from $9.6 billion in 2023.
A prime example of this growth is Voiceflow, a platform dedicated to creating conversational AI experiences. The company recently secured $15 million in a funding round led by venture capital firm OpenView. Founder and CEO Braden Ream announced that this funding elevates Voiceflow's total raised capital to $35 million and values the startup at a post-money valuation of $105 million.
“With this newest investment, Voiceflow will enhance its focus on product innovation,” Ream stated in an email interview. “This includes introducing an LLM-powered AI builder, enabling customers to develop and deploy language model-driven agents for customer support and beyond.”
Voiceflow was co-founded in 2019 by Ream, Tyler Han, Michael Hood, and Andrew Lawrence. The team first collaborated while in college, creating apps for Amazon Alexa before dropping out to develop a tool for building conversational agents aimed at automating specific customer service tasks.
“Our vision was to create the largest collaborative platform that empowers teams to design impressive AI agents for a variety of automation needs,” Ream explained. “Currently, our main focus is on automating customer support for websites and in-app assistants.”
Ream characterizes Voiceflow as a “Figma-quality” collaborative design platform for AI agents. Teams can utilize Voiceflow to deploy agents powered by large language models, including but not limited to OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Voiceflow offers flexibility, enabling companies to design, test, and deploy AI agents without being tied to a single model or technology. Users can integrate various models, including speech recognition systems, to craft tailored conversational AI experiences.
“Voiceflow seamlessly integrates with existing natural language understanding technologies, allowing teams to enhance their design and collaboration capabilities without incurring the costs of vendor changes,” Ream noted. “Additionally, it permits enterprise clients to leverage any large language model, including their proprietary solutions, alongside popular models accessed via APIs.”
With a talented workforce of about 50, Voiceflow faces competition from well-established players like Google Dialogflow, IBM Watson, AWS Lex, and Microsoft Bot Framework. Furthermore, startups such as Quiq, Yellow Messenger, Rasa, and Level AI have collectively raised over $100 million in funding.
Despite the competition, Voiceflow proudly boasts a robust customer base, including names like Amazon, JP Morgan, The Home Depot, State Farm, Vodafone, and a confidential government client, together serving approximately 130,000 users on the platform.
“Since the launch of ChatGPT in November, Voiceflow's signups and usage have nearly doubled, reflecting the rising interest in conversational AI,” Ream shared. “Voiceflow empowers both technical and nontechnical stakeholders to collaborate on building AI agents for any use case within a secure environment, allowing enterprises to swiftly develop, test, and deploy large language model-powered agents for diverse applications.”
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