Automation startup Ushur Inc. today announced that it has closed a $50 million funding round led by Third Point Ventures.

The Series C round follows a year in which Santa Clara, Calif.-based Ushur experienced significant growth. The startup claims to have tripled its headcount and doubled its customer base. It says its net revenue retention rate, a metric used to measure how existing customers increase their spending over time, grew 164% in the same time frame.

The company earlier closed a $25 million funding round in 2020 that was also led by Third Point Ventures. Since launch, it has raised a total of $92 million from investors.

Ushur provides an artificial intelligence platform that companies can use to automatically answer customer support requests. According to the company, its platform speeds up troubleshooting by up to 90% in some cases. It’s also capable of automating other customer-facing tasks such as collecting documents and distributing surveys.

The first component of the platform is a mobile app called the Invisible App. It includes a chatbot that can answer common customer questions and technical support requests. According to Ushur, companies can customize the Invisible App with their branding and make it available to their users in significantly less time than it would take to build a custom application.

There are situations where companies require the ability to collect data from customers. An insurer, for example, may require policyholders to submit documents when filing an insurance claim. Invisible App includes a data upload tool that companies can use to help customers more easily submit documents and other files.

Alongside the Invisible App, Ushur offers a tool called the Invisible Portal. It enables companies to embed chatbot and and file upload features in their websites. Another component of the platform is SmartMail, a natural language processing tool that can answer support tickets automatically or route them to the most relevant department.

“The previous generation of enterprise automation was designed for infrastructure processes,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Simha Sadasiva. “We built Ushur’s AI platform with a different goal in mind: to provide excellent customer experiences at scale and to deliver meaningful interactions that put the customer’s needs at the center. 

Ushur will use the proceeds from its latest funding round to enhance its platform. In particular, the startup plans to add new automation features powered by large language models, a category of neural networks that includes OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It will also use a part of the investment to expand into new markets. 

Image: Ushur