PolyAI

PolyAI is a leading global provider of enterprise voice AI, building conversational assistants that carry on natural, human-like conversations with customers to solve their problems at scale. Founded in 2017 as a spin-out from Cambridge University's Machine Intelligence Lab by CEO Nikola Mrkšić, CTO Tsung-Hsien (Shawn) Wen and Pei-Hao Su — all PhD holders in machine learning and dialogue systems — the company built its technology from the ground up for enterprise customer service.

Unlike most conversational AI firms that started with text chatbots, PolyAI built its own speech recognition engine and large language models purpose-tuned for the controlled, reliable performance that enterprise contact centres demand. Today it serves close to 100 enterprise customers including FedEx, Marriott, Caesars and Unicredit, and has grown 10x over the past two years.

In May 2024, PolyAI raised a $50 million Series C backed by Hedosophia, NVIDIA's NVentures, Zendesk, Khosla Ventures and others, bringing total funding to over $120 million. The company aims to handle half of all automated customer service calls within five years.