In this brief roundup, the big news consists of a case of fresh funding worth nearly half a billion dollars, juxtaposed alongside two flashy acquisitions—success, at last, in the first case for a celebrity buyer following a yearlong wait; and in the second, a California union of two concurring visions.
Uniphore Raises $400 Million to Extend Conversational Automation Tech
Uniphore, the provider of a conversational automation platform based in Palo Alto, California, announced on February 16 Series E funding of $400 million, its largest round to date, bringing the company’s total funding to $610 million and raising its valuation to $2.5 billion.
The latest bout of funding was led by NEA, the Maryland-based venture capital (VC) firm. Also participating were California VC and equity group March Capital, other existing Uniphore stakeholders, and new investors.
The fresh capital infusion will be used to extend Uniphore’s technology advancements in voice artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, and tonal emotion, all part of the company’s automation platform combining conversational AI, workflow automation, and robotic process automation (RPA). Last year, Uniphore’s acquisitions added new capabilities to its offerings: emotion AI functionality through Spanish software developer Emotion Research Lab; and enhanced low-code/no-code capabilities via Atlanta, Georgia, CX software provider Jacada.
Uniphore will also use money from the new round to expand business operations in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
Meta Closes Acquisition of Kustomer
After more than a year of regulatory scrutiny that ended last month with conditional antitrust approval from European authorities, the parent organization of Facebook closed its acquisition of Kustomer, the New York-based startup with a customer software system of interest to the social media giant.
In its blog update on February 15, Meta Platforms said it has “complied with all regulatory requirements” in the acquisition, which had been valued at more than $1 billion when it was first announced in November 2020.
Meta, which also owns Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, in addition to Facebook, finally secured approval for the acquisition from the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union (EU) responsible for enforcing EU laws, after agreeing to provide rival firms free access to its messaging channels for at least 10 years.
Kustomer is the provider of a customer relationship management (CRM) software that lets businesses manage on a central dashboard the customer messages coming from multiple services. That capability is desired by Meta, which is hoping that businesses will use Meta properties, such as the instant messaging utility WhatsApp, to communicate with their customers, instead of using other forms of customer communication, such as email or 1-800 numbers.
Perceptyx Acquires AI-Powered Coaching Platform Cultivate
Temecula, California-based Perceptyx has acquired Cultivate, headquartered in San Francisco, pairing the former’s active listening and feedback platform with the latter’s passive listening and digital coaching solution to bridge the gap between signal and action in the employee experience (EX).
Perceptyx is a people analytics platform that deploys enterprise-class surveys, back-end analytics systems, and feedback listening tools to help identify unsatisfactory EX elements in an organization, enabling aligned and effective teams.
In comparison, Cultivate is a digital leadership platform that leverages AI to scale coaching across the enterprise, capturing existing behavior data in a leader’s own digital communication channels and delivering personalized leadership insights and recommendations across the leader’s team.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but the addition of Cultivate’s AI-powered learning mechanisms to the Perceptyx product suite will result in an end-to-end action platform for employee listening, leader feedback, and performance improvement, Perceptyx said in a statement.
Author Information
Alex is responsible for writing about trends and changes that are impacting the customer experience market. He had served as Principal Editor at Village Intelligence, a Los Angeles-based consultancy on technology impacting healthcare and healthcare-related industries. Alex was also Associate Director for Content Management at Omdia and Informa Tech, where he produced white papers, executive summaries, market insights, blogs, and other key content assets. His areas of coverage spanned the sectors grouped under the technology vertical, including semiconductors, smart technologies, enterprise & IT, media, displays, mobile, power, healthcare, China research, industrial and IoT, automotive, and transformative technologies.
At IHS Markit, he was Managing Editor of the company’s flagship IHS Quarterly, covering aerospace & defense, economics & country risk, chemicals, oil & gas, and other IHS verticals. He was Principal Editor of analyst output at iSuppli Corp. and Managing Editor of Market Watch, a fortnightly newsletter highlighting significant analyst report findings for pitching to the media. He started his career in writing as an Editor-Reporter for The Associated Press.
