San Francisco-based AI infrastructure startup Rasa Technologies announced a $26 million Series B financing round led by Andreessen Horowtiz on Tuesday.
The open-source platform for AI development software applies natural language processing research, machine learning and flexible infrastructure in order to help develop conversational AI applications.
“Alan and I started Rasa in my kitchen in Berlin, trying to build our own AI assistant and getting frustrated with the tools we had access to as developers. So we decided to build our own and open source them,” Alex Weidauer, co-founder and CEO of Rasa, said in a blog post announcing the funding.
The company offers three key products. The first, Rasa Open Source, is used for conversational AI design. The second, Rasa X, enables developers to share an AI assistant built within Rasa Open Source. Finally, Rasa Enterprise provides a platform built specifically for businesses in order to develop contextual AI assistants at scale.
“A simplistic chatbot might be easy, but a resilient, fully contextual assistant that works is not.” Weidauer said in a statement. “[We’re] committed to supporting the developer in creating robust, mission-critical bot applications, through better research, investment in open source software, superior developer tools and education, and flexible on-prem or cloud deployment.”
Rasa intends to use the new funding to invest in the continual growth of its products as well as AI research and development. The company also plans on expanding its product development and research teams.
Leading Fortune 500 companies Adobe, HCA Healthcare and Travelers count themselves among Rasa’s list of clients. According to the company, Rasa has been downloaded more than three million times since its launch.
“Text and voice-based automation will dramatically change the world in the next decade and enterprises around the world are trying to incorporate chatbots in their automation strategy,” a spokesperson for the company said in an email to Built In.
Rasa Technologies has raised a total of $40.1 million in venture capital to date, according to Crunchbase. The company is headquartered in San Francisco with additional offices located in Berlin.
