Tiger Global leads WIZ.AI’s US$30 million funding round

CONVERSATIONAL artificial intelligence startup WIZ.AI has raised US$30 million in a funding round led by Tiger Global, GL Ventures and Gaorong Capital.

Other investors in the round include GGV Capital, Yunqi Partners, Singtel Innov8, Wavemaker Partners, Insignia Ventures and K3 Ventures.

WIZ.AI has developed a voice platform, the Talkbot, which can deliver over 100 million automated customer interactions, with speech pattern recognition, text-to-speech voice customisation, and self-learning extended dialogue management. The platform can converse in English, Malay, Mandarin, Thai, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Bahasa Indonesia and colloquial forms of English such as Singlish and Taglish (a form of Filipino English).

“We believe in investing in technology and people to deliver the best possible value and experiences for users, especially our customers. WIZ.AI has the strong capability to improve support and expertise in local conversational language using AI that really listens, understands and speaks like a local,” said Kum Tho Wan, managing director, Investments, Asia Pacific at Singtel Innov8.

Now, the startup wants to expand globally to Australia, America and Mexico next. It currently has 200 clients across banking, insurance, fintech, telecommunications, e-commerce, healthcare and the public sector. WIZ.AI also claims that it is on track to grow its revenue and customers 10 times this year.

“The company’s growth of over 10X year on year arises from its mission-critical mindset focusing on providing tangible results for its clients. This value-driven mindset combined with its rapidly expanding local language engine will allow WIZ.AI to springboard from its success in South-east Asia to expand rapidly across global markets,” said Matthew Ma, managing director, Gaorong Capital.

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The funding will be used to grow the company’s presence and headcount in South-east Asia and Latin America, building out its research and development as well as service teams in those markets.

“Our new growth strategy, supported by this latest round of investment, will enable us to further hone our competitive advantages in localising and hyper personalising diverse languages and accents, humanising machines to efficiently solve everyday issues for people,” said Jennifer Zhang, chief executive officer and co-founder of WIZ.AI.