Contxto – Do you ever roll your eyes when you dial a number and a dull, automated voice answers? For many companies, this is an undeniable pain point in their customer service or marketing strategies. Leveraging AI technology, startup VOIQ is developing conversational more human-like voicebots to change that.
Realizing the value of this technology, the startup with Colombian origins recently received US$2 million in a round led by LEAP Global Ventures. So far, VOIQ has amassed a total of US$5 million from Silicon Valley investors since launching this year.
“VOIQ is solving a problem that so many people believed unsolvable,” said LEAP Managing Partner, Roman Leal. “Bringing human-like conversational voicebots to automate business calls is a game-changer for high-growth companies looking for that edge over the competition. No startup is better positioned to deliver than VOIQ.”
Other investors included 10XCapital, Brian Finn, David Shreni and Tom Chavez.
From here, VOIQ will use the capital to fund its new marketing strategy and engineering talent. Plus, the startup will also integrate its tech with CRMs as well as sales automation platforms. Ultimately, this will expand VOIQ’s platform to 500,000 prospective users.
AI voice startup
VOIQ started out at Y Combinator’s prestigious accelerator school in 2015. Although back then, the startup’s Colombian founder, Ricardo-Garcia Amaya, had something a little different in mind.
Originally, he envisioned VOIQ as the “Uber of telemarketing.” In other words, he wanted the platform to link companies with call service agents best fitting the partners’ needs, particularly when it comes to language. Safe to say that AI technology is bringing Amaya closer to achieving this concept.
If Amazon’s Alexa or Microsoft’s Cortana have taught us anything, it’s that the human touch when interacting with technology is a big deal. The startup’s founder puts it best when asked about this successful investment round.
For him, the US$2 million is “a clear indicator that this space is about to experience hyper-growth,” said Amaya, “While industry experts predicted that AI voice for business use would take several more years to mature, a wide range of solutions such as Amazon Alexa for Business are already emerging at a fast pace.”
As a matter of fact, this startup impressively launched its SaaS platform this past February. All things considered, VOIQ has certainly attracted a lot of attention from the big kahunas at Silicon Valley since then. So I’m excited to see what else awaits this startup.
-ML
