Nexus-backed Observe.ai raises $26 million from new and returning investors

San Francisco-headquartered Z21 Labs, which owns AI (artificial intelligence) powered voice solutions provider Observe.ai, has raised $26 million in a Series A round led by Scale Venture Partners.

Hedge fund Steadview Capital, venture capital firms Nexus Venture Partners and 01 Advisors, and private investment firm Emergent Ventures were returning investors in the round. 

The Series A takes the total capital raised by the startup so far to $34 million so far. Observe.ai last raised capital in August 2018 when Mumbai-based Nexus, Maschmeyer Group Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, Hack VC and existing investors Emergent Ventures and Y Combinator invested $8 million in the company.

The capital raised in the latest round will be used to hire talent and accelerate product development, the startup said a statement. Separately, Observe.ai has been accepted into the Microsoft for Startups programme through which Microsoft customers can use Observe.ai’s platform via the Azure marketplace, the statement added.

“Legacy speech analytics systems are simply not meeting the needs of the world’s top brands. This investment will fuel our mission to elevate agent performance through AI-based coaching and insights,” Swapnil Jain, co-founder and CEO, said. 

Observe.ai was founded in 2017 and has operations in Silicon Valley and Bengaluru. Jain founded the business with Akash Singh and Sharath Keshava. Jain earlier worked at social media platform Twitter and global search engine Google. Singh was with marketing platform InMobi and Keshava spent several years in companies such as Unbxd, AWS and Akamai.

The platform’s proprietary software SpeechNLP analyses audio and text streams, highlights topics that trigger specific customer experience, flags frequent mentions, shifts in data, and anomalies. The company also provides automation services for contact centre agents, customer engagement and voice processing using AI.

In the past 12 months, Observe.ai claims to have onboarded 100 customers including software major Microsoft, cloud-based contact center Talkdesk, business process outsourcing firms ERCBPO and itelBPO. Existing customers include TripAdvisor, Concentrix, ClearMe, and Root Insurance. 

Foster City, California-headquartered Scale Venture Partners, the new investor in Observe.ai, is a specialist technology investor that backs early stage startups across areas such as SaaS, mobile and internet. The firm’s portfolio includes companies such as Hubspot and Docusign and it currently has over $1 billion in funds under management.