Only have 1 minute? Here are 3 key takeaways:
- Czech AI Startup Born Digital closes €2M round from Seed Starter of Česká spořitelna (the biggest Czech bank measured by the number of clients), from the Erste Group, and J&T Ventures.
- The startup builds digital personas to serve as digital public administrator, digital insurance advisor, medical assistant, and many other roles for commercial use.
- The investment will support their expansion outside of the region.
Founded in 2019 by Tomas Malovec and Zenon Sliwka, Born Digital provides an AI omni‑channel platform that helps companies transform and revolutionize their contact centers. With a team of 45 people, the startup has built digital personas for the state administration, healthcare, and the police of the Czech Republic, but also banks, insurance companies, travel agencies, petrol stations, e-shops, and shopping centers.
“The way we use generative AI and large language models brings a completely new and more efficient approach. We don’t work by predicting the queries and problems that customers may have – our technology allows the digital personas to use all the relevant and available information from the given company channels, based on which they can not only advise the customer, but most importantly they can solve the issue,” says Zenon Sliwka, co-founder and sales director of Born Digital.
To fuel their growth, the startup just announced raising a €2M Seed round led by Seed Starter of Česká spořitelna (the biggest Czech bank measured by the number of clients) from the Erste Group and joined by their current investor, J&T Ventures. This brings their total funding to €2.6M. The startup is preparing to raise a Series A within the next 18 months.
“Not only do we perceive a huge growth potential of AI products offered by Born Digital, but we also recognize the high added value of those AI products. That’s why we have decided to support the founders not only through investment, but through active deployment of some use cases within the bank,” says Jiří Skopový, head of the Seed Starter program.
“Tomas and Zenon from Born Digital were focused on AI already during the pre-seed financing round. The current wave of large language models may have started a revolution in the industry, but for Born Digital it’s just an important evolution of their product. Co-founders Tomáš and Zenon have shown that they can transform the current trends in technology into a scalable business. I believe the investment will help them on their journey to become a leader outside of the current region as well,” adds David Polach, Principal at J&T Ventures.
At the moment, Born Digital has more than 80 B2B clients in 7 countries (Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary) and with the currently growing demand it plans to further strengthen its presence abroad.
“The investment will mainly support the expansion outside of the region and the commercialization of a new product, the so-called digital persona – in the form of a digital public administrator, digital insurance advisor, medical assistant, and many other roles. Born Digital is working on several use cases together with the Erste Group and thus the investment from Seed Starter is fitting. We are convinced that they ride the wave and I believe that their digital persona has the potential to become a global product,” Polach explains.
With projects like the digital public administrator, digital insurance advisor, and medical assistant in the pipeline, Born Digital aims to showcase the global potential of its innovative AI solutions.
“The digital persona is not meant to replace humans, but it is here to relieve them of manual and repetitive tasks with low added value while keeping the human touch for the users. The product we have developed combines a unique technology with a human and friendly approach, which has not been so common in the case of artificial intelligence. This opens a tremendous amount of potential use cases in various fields,” says Tomáš Malovec, CEO and co-founder of Born Digital.
