In this roundup, Leapsome and Level AI lead a group of four CX-oriented providers in raising fresh capital, together bringing in a total of $80 million in funding rounds; Alliants and AmplifAI are the two other recent recipients of new investments. In M&A news, Optimove acquires Kumulos to augment its customer relationship management (CRM) platform with mobile messaging for more powerful CX engagement.

Leapsome Raises $60 Million

In its first-ever infusion of outside capital, Berlin-based Leapsome, the startup and provider of an employee engagement platform, has raised $60 million in Series A funding. While the company’s financing in the past had been achieved exclusively through bootstrapping, funding this time was led by US venture capital (VC) and private equity firm Insight Partners, together with the participation of Swedish early-stage investor Creandum and Germany’s VC fund Visionaries Club. Leapsome will be using the fresh round of investment to help further the development of its people enablement solution and accelerate the company’s growth, the company says in a prepared statement.

Founded in 2016, Leapsome aims to improve worker performance and satisfaction by helping companies drive employee engagement through a platform that supports ongoing corporate learning, a feedback system, and a mechanism for setting objectives and key results (OKRs) to align organizations and employees. “Having witnessed the growing pains of fast-paced companies, we knew that people enablement was the secret to a thriving organization,” the company says in the statement announcing the funding.

Leapsome says it is growing rapidly, with revenue more than tripling in 2021. The company is also looking to ramp up thriving activity in the US by establishing an office in New York City sometime this year.  

Level AI Raises $20 Million

Level AI, the provider of a CX platform on voice artificial intelligence (AI) technology from Silicon Valley, successfully closed Series B funding of $20 million in a recent round, bringing the total amount of new capital it has raised to $35 million.

The latest funding round was led by Neeraj Agrawal of Battery Ventures, the technology-focused investment firm headquartered in San Francisco, who had also led the Series A financing. Previous investors Eniac Ventures and Village Global participated in the current round, which represents a fourfold increase in the company’s valuation since the first funding bout closed six months ago. 

Level AI’s proprietary technology leverages conversational intelligence for the customer contact industry with capabilities in agent assist, analytics, automation and quality assurance, helping enterprises resolve customer issues in the cloud and improve the overall CX being delivered.  Level AI can also integrate with the entire customer service stack, including cloud telephony providers like Five9 and Twilio; CRM systems such as Salesforce and Kustomer; and ticketing and chat providers like Helpshift and Zendesk.

Alliants Secures Investment from Zendesk

Alliants, the provider of a customer guest experience platform headquartered in Southampton, England, has secured a minority stake investment from Zendesk, the San Francisco-based provider of software as a service (SaaS) products for customer service. Financial terms of the investment have not been disclosed.

The Alliants platform currently combines lightweight customer messaging with concierge capabilities, enabling contactless communication between businesses and their customers over hundreds of different messaging channels.With the investment, Alliants will become more tightly integrated with Zendesk, allowing value-added solutions, including messaging insights, to be developed on top of Zendesk. The investment will also help Alliants accelerate delivery of a high-touch personalized service, enabling brands to be more customer-centric with a messaging-first approach.

“Today’s customer expects more than good service, they expect an experience. This is becoming increasingly true whether you’re a last-mile delivery company or a six-star eco resort,” says Tristan Gadsby, CEO and founder of Alliants. “Our shared mission with Zendesk is to put conversations at the heart of the customer experience and help companies fulfil their goals.”

AmplifAI Announces Breyer Capital Investment

AmplifAI, the provider of a platform for enabling employee performance headquartered in Plano, Texas, has secured the participation of Breyer Capital in joining the company’s Series A funding round. Previously announced in October 2021, the Series A funding was led by New York- and Los Angeles-based VC firm Greycroft, along with continued participation by the three Texas-based funds of LiveOak Venture Partners, Dallas Venture Partners, and Capital Factory. Since the launch of the fund nearly six months ago, AmplifAI has continued to scale rapidly, reporting a doubling in revenue growth year-over-year since inception.

AmplifAI gave Jim Breyer from Breyer Capital a warm welcome as an investor to the round. “We extended our Series A funding round to include the investment from Breyer Capital and are thrilled to have them join,” says Sean Minter, AmplifAI founder and CEO. Breyer, for his part, praised AmplifAI and its initiatives. “AmplifAI has created a category-defining solution that leverages AI to enable hybrid contact centers to achieve optimal results.”

AmplifAI will use the new funding to continue the strong growth momentum of its employee enablement platform for hybrid enterprises, according to an official statement from the company.

Optimove Acquires Kumulos

Optimove, the Israeli provider of a CRM marketing software, has acquired Scottish firm Kumulos for its mobile messaging and engagement features. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

With a customer data platform (CDP) at its core, Optimove is known for helping manage the large-scale CRM marketing frameworks of data-rich brands across industries. The platform can personalize what might be thousands of campaigns for hundreds of segments, with AI-driven solutions autonomously determining the next-best-action for individual customers, eliminating the need for marketers to manually map every customer journey.

The Kumulos acquisition will bolster Optimove’s AI engine, adding native mobile capabilities that will allow brands to orchestrate multichannel marketing journeys across the web, email, and mobile spaces. Marketers, for instance, will be able to re-engage customers with mobile push notifications that support rich media, templates, and deep linking, depending on each customer’s usage history. Marketers can also obtain higher-accuracy automated messages leveraging geofences and beacon technology, combined with real-time behavior, customer attributes, and preferences.