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Directly’s chatbot is used for technical support for games or for engaging businesses on platforms such as Airbnb as an assistant to the hosts to help answer questions about how to list on the platform.
FREMONT, CA: Directly, a company focused on making chatbots more user-friendly and intelligent, secured $20 million in a new round of financing, which was led by Samsung’s NEXT. Other venture capital investors included AvidBank, M12 (Venture capital arm of Microsoft), Costanoa Ventures, Industry Ventures, Northgate, and true Ventures.
Mike de la Cruz, who was the chief business officer of Directly, will be the new CEO. Antony Brydon, who co-founded the company with Jeff Patterson (currently head of product), is moving over from the CEO role to become head of the platform. He will be focusing on how and where to take Directly’s technology beyond its current market focus on chatbots built for customer service.
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“We are thrilled to have Mike at the helm of Directly,” Mark Selcow, partner at Costanoa Ventures, said in a statement. “He has driven record-setting growth for the company in 2019, and we look forward to the impact he’s going to have into 2020 and beyond.”
See Also: Top Chatbot Solution Companies
Artificial intelligence has made the involvement of humans less in many business and consumer interactions. The use of chatbots is increasing across various platforms and different organizations. Directly’s intelligent chatbot platform helps businesses identify and reach out to “experts” in the industry or product in question, collect knowledge from them, and then integrate that into a company’s AI to help train it and answer questions more accurately. It also gathers data input and output into the AI systems and determine what works and what does not and find solutions for it.
With the growth of such AI-driven platforms, it is possible that Directly will soon compete with giants such as Google and Amazon. Neither company has worked with Directly yet, but such potential competition will make for an interesting prospect and impact online interactions for years to come.
Directly will perhaps work with a growing number of businesses in the future, as the use of chatbot continues to increase among organizations.
See Also: Top Customer Service Solution Companies
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