• US-based, but with Romanian DNA, startup NLX has raised over €4.2M in a Series Seed II round.
• The funding was led by American IAG Capital Partners and joined by JetBlue Ventures and Flying Fish Ventures.
• The tech startup has raised almost €9M so far to offer a conversational AI tool for different industries as they have customers in travel, and hospitality, to name a few.
“NLX’s technology continues to help airlines innovate new and exciting ways to power a seamless travel experience throughout every part of a customer’s trip. NLX’s multimodal capabilities are its prime differentiator that’s going to change the way customers interact with brands,” Ryan Chou, Investment Principal at JetBlue Ventures, shared.
Conversational AI NLX is working on transforming the customer service field by bringing a self-service tool to the market. It proposes to fix a few challenges along the way, like high waiting rates to get answers, and personnel shortages. The startup enables both enterprises and mid-sized companies to build and manage automated conversations, available 24/7.
The fresh investment will be used to fuel the conversational AI’s marketplace expansion and continue developing its product. They will launch Dialog Studio 2.0 this year, following the launch of The Showroom, a multimodal conversational experience with Amazon.
Improving customer satisfaction through automation
“In an age of increasing digital interactions with customers, many companies are upgrading their customer service technology, including their contact centers, to improve large-scale internal and external communication and improve customer self-service through automation,” Andrei Papancea, CEO and Chief Product Officer of NLX, reveals.
NLX was launched in New York, in 2018, by co-founders with Romanian roots, brothers Andrei Papancea as CEO, and Vlad Papancea as CTO. Both have a background in Computer Science. Andrei is also a Cloud Computing and Big Data lecturer at Columbia University. They both have worked at Argo Group in the past, and have previously co-founded Mangata, an on-demand premium gift delivery service.
NLX is a no-code platform that aims to empower teams to build, manage, and analyze conversations in one login. Their business model is based on a usage-based pricing model so that brands can scale their customer support on a friendly budget. This means that they pay only for what they use.
Now, customers do not have to wait “in line” on the phone or online to have their questions answered or issues fixed. With the help of an AI, customers can resolve their inquiries at their own pace, with vocal help from an always-improving AI via the phone, for example.
The future is AI
Where there is demand, there is also an offer. As more people will shop online, more questions will arise, and so will expectations for inquiries to be met with an answer a.s.a.p.. So, to free up time for team members to focus on creative tasks instead of repetitive ones, AI comes to the rescue.
Another tech startup with Romanian DNA that is offering a similar solution is EmailTree, which is currently raising. With the AI global market alone projected to reach over €1300B by 2029, we look forward to more AI funding rounds this year.
