Cognigy Raises $100m as Major Enterprise Brands Depend on its AI Agent Workforce

Series C Funding Round Led by Eurazeo Growth to Accelerate AI Automation R&D and Global Expansion

Düsseldorf, San Francisco (June 11, 2024) - Cognigy, a global leader in AI-first customer service automation, announced today that it has raised $100 million in Series C funding. The round was led by Eurazeo Growth, with participation from existing investors Insight Partners, DTCP, DN Capital, and others. The new funding will accelerate Cognigy’s mission to deliver AI-first customer service at scale.

Cognigy provides a market-leading enterprise-grade AI platform to build, operate and analyze the advanced AI Agent workforce that many major brands including Lufthansa Group, Virgin Pulse, Frontier Airlines, Bosch, Toyota, TechStyle Fashion Group, and Mercedes-Benz rely on today to deliver exceptional customer service. Cognigy’s AI-first approach uses both Conversational and Generative AI to deliver pre-trained AI Agents that resolve high-volume customer requests at scale. This allows enterprise customer service leaders to focus their scarce human agents on high-value conversations. As well as serving end customers, the same AI Agents switch roles to act as Agent Copilots, providing instant and contextual assistance to human agents and automating routine tasks such as call wrap-up.

“Delightful customer service is a top priority for enterprises and is one of the pain points pervading every industry that technology has not been able to solve successfully to date. Cognigy’s enterprise-grade orchestration layer for AI Agents works alongside human agents to deliver a highly effective, personalized service on any channel,” said Raluca Ragab, Managing Director, Head of UK and DACH of Eurazeo Growth.

“We spoke to a large number of Cognigy’s customers as part of our research and, without exception, they all would recommend Cognigy because the platform enables them to reach a very high level of automation (70%+) across millions of conversations with no latency, which is very complex to do. We are proud to support Cognigy’s global growth and mission to revolutionize conversation automation for the enterprise. This investment aligns perfectly with our Eurazeo Growth strategy of supporting European AI champions and scaling them up to become global category leaders,” added Romain Mombert, Director of Eurazeo Growth.

This announcement follows years of triple-digit growth for Cognigy, fueled by an increase in market demand across all industries. In the last 12 months, Cognigy has seen explosive growth in the use of its platform, with hundreds of millions of interactions handled on the platform.

"The market opportunity for AI-first customer service is immense," said Philipp Heltewig, Co-founder and CEO of Cognigy. "Enterprises across all industries are recognizing the critical need for efficient, scalable, and personalized customer interactions. Our platform delivers and manages AI Agents that revolutionize the customer service landscape, providing businesses with the tools to exceed customer expectations and drive loyalty. This funding will enable us to seize this opportunity, expand our global footprint, and continue to innovate our platform to meet the evolving needs of our clients."

Cognigy Co-founders Benjamin Mayr, Philipp Heltewig & Sascha Poggemann

According to Gartner, the Conversational AI market is projected to reach $36 billion in revenue by 2032, up from $8.2 billion in 2023.

In addition to fuelling Cognigy’s global expansion, the new capital round will be directed toward enhancing Cognigy’s research and development efforts in Conversational AI with Generative AI, enabling the creation of more sophisticated and intuitive customer service solutions, and the acceleration of cutting-edge AI-first technologies that deliver concrete ROI.

"We continue to see tremendous potential in Cognigy's AI-first approach to customer service," said Teddie Wardi, Managing Director at Insight Partners. "The company’s innovative technology and strong leadership team position Cognigy as a market leader in enterprise customer service automation, as evidenced by top rankings in Gartner and Forrester's Conversational AI reports. We are excited to continue our support of Cognigy’s vision and growth."

Customers Speak Out

Over 1,000 brands worldwide rely on Cognigy’s AI platform with millions of transactions processed per day in production.

“AI-first customer service is the future for every large enterprise. Cognigy’s AI Agents deliver instant and personalized service at scale, which has been critical to our operations and is helping millions of our customers every year. We congratulate Cognigy on their funding and look forward to further innovation,” said Nick Allgaier, Product Manager “Digital Assistants” Lufthansa Group.

“Through the use of state-of-the-art AI technology that we have obtained with Cognigy, it is now possible for airports to elevate their communication and interaction with passengers to a new level,” said Alexander Lacker, Product Manager Terminal Processes & Passengers at Munich Airport.

“AI-based Phone and Chatbots can help companies elevate customer service to the next level. Cognigy’s groundbreaking combination of Generative and Conversational AI empowers companies such as ERGO to develop and implement multiple Next-Gen AI Agents for customer service across voice and chat channels, while being flexible, scalable, and compliant,” commented Hanbing Ma, Head of Innovation & Digital Transformation at ERGO.

"We are on a mission to redefine the standards of customer service by leveraging the transformative power of Conversational AI and GenAI. Our collaboration with Cognigy is a testament to our commitment to pioneering solutions that are at the forefront of technology and meet our members' needs. The integration of Cognigy's technology into our service framework is a game-changer, setting a new benchmark for excellence in the industry," said Jack Roberts, Director of GMS Technology & Applications at TechStyleOS.

“Toyota vehicle owners embraced Contact Center AI already before the hype. Why? Because it works. With Cognigy's AI Agents, we stay ahead and provide real value to customers and car dealerships,” said Peter-Pascal Meik, Manager of Innovation & Projects at Toyota.

“With Cognigy’s AI Agents, we help our valued consumers and at the same time are building direct relationships and enhancing our brand experience. Cognigy.AI is flexible enough to cover various use cases while providing a common framework for global scaling and governance,” said Christian Hohmann, Head of New Technologies (AI) & IT-Management at Henkel.

Check out our announcement video for more: