Inbenta, a provider of a platform for conversational artificial intelligence tools such as chatbots, knowledge management and search, today announced that it has raised $40 million in new funding to continue building its product base and expand into new markets.

The funding round was led by Tritium Partners and brings the total raised by the company to $60 million.

Inbenta was founded in 2011 and provides a conversational AI platform that uses natural language processing, which allows it to understand human speech and context in order to answer questions rapidly and with a high degree of accuracy.

The company’s tools allow businesses to build tailor-made customer-facing solutions more easily that can be dropped into their existing communication channels, as well as knowledge base searches that can open up company information for customers. “Inbenta’s conversational AI is a game changer for any business that has to handle customer inquiries, whether simple questions or more complicated tasks,” said Chief Executive Melissa Solis.

Inbenta’s products cross four primary services: Chatbot and Messenger, Knowledge and Search Engine.

Chatbot and Messenger are both AI chatbots that can be dropped directly into a company’s communication channels, such as websites, social media, Slack, Facebook and email, to connect with customers and answer their customer service questions. If the AI can’t resolve a question or provide a solution to a customer, it can escalate it and turn it into a ticket for a human to handle it.

The Knowledge and Search Engine systems are not chatbots but instead operate by providing a comprehensive methodology for accessing knowledge bases, information and suggestions for promoting self-service among customers. Knowledge combines a mechanism to drive customers to frequently asked questions based on what they might need to know and even offers potential solutions based on what they type into contact forms. Search Engine enhances search using contextual understanding to provide better results and adds autocomplete suggestions based on the needs of customers and employees.

Inbenta’s solutions can address customers in more than 35 languages. They’re designed to be configurable and deployable within seconds since they require virtually zero training, according to the company. For many industries, Inbenta can provide its AI solution pretrained using industry-specific lexicon, further reducing any incremental training time for any customer-specific terminology.

“Inbenta represents the future of customer experience,” said Jordi Torras, chief innovation officer of Inbenta. “For over a decade, we’ve been optimizing our technology so that customers can be understood and responded to in a way that is helpful, genuine and, most importantly, achieves a quick and impactful resolution.”

Since its launch, the company has expanded its reach to more than 250 global brands using its solution across a number of industries, including financial services, travel, e-commerce, telecom and utilities.

Image: Production Perig