Conversational Marketing Leader Automat Announces USD$8.3 Million in Series A Funding

MONTREAL, June 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Automat, the leader in AI-driven Conversational Marketing, today announced a USD$8.3 million Series A funding round led by the Brandtech group You & Mr Jones. The funding round also included investments from new investors Comcast Ventures and Omidyar Technology Ventures along with follow-on investments from existing investors Relay Ventures, Real Ventures, and USAA. With this latest funding round, total investment to date in Automat is USD$11 million – making Automat the best funded company in the emerging AI-driven Conversational Marketing category.

Conversational Marketing using AI is enabling marketers to achieve their dream of having personalized one-on-one conversations with their customers, learn about them, and build ongoing bi-directional relationships. These breakthroughs are occurring due to two concurrent macro trends: the rise of both messaging and artificial intelligence. The majority of mobile usage is now occurring inside of popular messaging applications like Facebook Messenger and WeChat, giving companies the ability to directly reach the billions of people using these apps daily. At the same time, advances in AI are opening the door for companies to have conversations with their customers at scale and in doing so learn about their needs and preferences without monitoring their online behavior in intrusive ways. These conversations have the power to build customer relationships, increase loyalty, and drive sales, all while delivering unique consumer experiences.

"The caliber of investors in this latest funding round, along with our recent customer announcements with L'Oreal and National Bank of Canada, all point to the growing momentum of Conversational Marketing among leading brands," said Andy Mauro, CEO of Automat. "We see a real convergence around brandtech, media and e-commerce and, with You & Mr Jones, Comcast Ventures, and Omidyar Technology Ventures, we have very strategic partners to help us realize our vision of letting brands build personalized one-on-one conversational experiences for their customers, fans, and followers."

"We're building a technology group that can help brands deliver their marketing much more effectively and we're clearly not alone in believing that AI and Conversational Marketing are going to be game-changers in the world of business. But as ever, execution is what counts. That's the thing that's been very impressive about Andy and the Automat team since our initial seed investment. They are very tangibly delivering on the promise," said David Jones, Founder of You & Mr Jones and former Havas global CEO. "Automat has the team, vision, and technology needed to make Conversational Marketing a widespread reality and help brands get the greatest return on investment from it."

"We believe Conversational Marketing using real AI will be critical for brands in the future," said Amy Banse, Managing Director and Head of Funds for Comcast Ventures. "Automat has emerged as a leader in that important new category. We look forward to supporting this talented team and helping them grow and scale."

A large portion of the new funding will be used to support and expand the company's engineering, research, and product teams to accelerate the development of additional features delivering the most complete Conversational Marketing Cloud platform. Automat also plans to allocate funding towards further business development, sales, and marketing efforts.

About Automat
Automat is helping companies use AI to talk to their customers, fans, and followers, to understand and serve them better. We're the first Conversational Marketing platform powered by artificial intelligence and we believe in a world where every company can have a personalized one-on-one conversation with every customer. www.automat.ai

SOURCE Automat Technologies, Inc

Related Links

www.automat.ai