Startup Kore.ai Inc. today announced that it has raised a $50 million funding round led by Vistara Growth and PNC to fuel the growth of its software platform, which helps companies build artificial intelligence assistants to automate repetitive business tasks.

Kore.ai also disclosed that it has secured a $20 million credit line from Sterling National Bank.

Kore.ai provides a software platform that enables companies to deploy AI-powered virtual assistants in their business operations. An online retailer can use the startup’s platform to embed a chatbot into its website that automatically answers customer service requests. A bank could build an AI assistant that answers technical support questions related to its personal finance app.

Across the various industries where it has a presence, Kore.ai says that its platform is used by more than 1,000 organizations. The startup’s customers include more than 100 of the enterprises on the Fortune 500 list. 

Kore.ai enables business workers to build AI assistants in a visual dashboard that doesn’t require any coding expertise to use. In the interest of further reducing development complexity, Kore.ai provides several pre-packaged assistant built to answer frequently recurring questions. The chatbots are each optimized either for use either by organizations in a specific industry, for example financial services, or by specific departments such as information technology and human resources teams. 

Kore.ai has also applied the AI technology powering its assistants to other use cases. The startup provides a search engine that companies can embed into their websites or employee portals to let users find information on a self-service basis. Additionally, there’s a workflow builder that makes it possible to create software procedures for automating common back office tasks.

Kore.ai refers to its multifaceted approach to business automation as experience optimization. “As customer expectations continue to rise, they increasingly expect the type of world-class experience that our customers deliver using our best-of-breed conversational AI based XO platform,” said Kore.ai founder and Chief Executive Officer Raj Koneru.

Under the hood, Kore.ai uses natural language processing to analyze the user requests sent to AI assistants powered by its platform and generate answers. The startup has also developed a system that it says can customize answers based on factors such as the previous requests made by a user and customer preferences.

Kore.ai claims to have helped its enterprise customers achieve aggregate savings of more than $500 million by automating previously manual processes. Kore.ai also disclosed today that it has been growing at a rate of more than 100% over the past few years, but didn’t share more detailed information.

Image: Kore.ai