Cognigy GmbH, the developer of an artificial intelligence platform designed to make contact centers more efficient, today announced that it has closed a $100 million funding round. 

Eurazeo Growth led the Series C investment. It was joined by Insight Partners, DTCP, DN Capital and several other backers. The round follows several years in which Düsseldorf -based Cognigy claims to have experienced “triple-digit” growth.

“The market opportunity for AI-first customer service is immense,” said Cognigy Chief Executive Officer Philipp Heltewig (pictured, center, with the company’s two other co-founders). “Enterprises across all industries are recognizing the critical need for efficient, scalable, and personalized customer interactions.”

Toyota Motor Corp., Nestlé S.A and about 170 other companies use Cognigy’s platform to build AI-powered help desk assistants. Those assistants can answer common customer questions, as well as automate certain support tasks such as processing refunds. Cognigy says that its platform processes hundreds of millions of contact center interactions every year for the enterprises in its installed base.

Customers create AI assistants through a low-code interface. The console makes it possible to customize the messages that a chatbot generates, as well as configure it to perform tasks in a company’s internal applications. A retailer, for example, could configure its chatbot to sync data about product return requests to its inventory management system.

Cognigy uses large language models to power some of its platform’s features. According to the company, those models make it possible to personalize chatbot responses based on information that customers include in support requests. When a user asks a question that can’t be answered automatically, Cognigy’s AI agents can route the inquiry to a member of the help desk team.

The company has built several productivity features for support representatives. According to Cognigy, its platform save time by automatically retrieving a customer’s past support tickets and the other information that may be required to process a help desk request. Moreover, the built-in AI models can use that customer data to generate personalized upsell offers.

A third set of capabilities in Cognigy’s platform is designed to help contact center managers identity areas for improvement. The feature set is headlined by an analytics dashboard that tracks metrics such as the average amount of time it takes to process customer support tickets. Cognigy also provides more detailed data, such as the reason a particular user decided not to go through with a purchase.

The company will use its newly announced $100 million round to enhance its platform’s AI features. According to TechCrunch, Cognigy will hire 75 employees by year’s end to support the effort. The company also plans to grow its market presence in North America.

Photo: Cognigy