TENYX raises $15 million in Seed Funding Round

Next-generation voice-based intelligent systems developing company TENYX raises $15 million in a recently held seed funding round. Several investors, such as AME Cloud Ventures, Cota Capital, Morado Ventures, Pathbreaker Ventures, Point72 Ventures, and StageOne Ventures, participated in the company’s funding round. 

As the startup is pre-income, the officials did not provide much detail regarding its technology and where they want to invest the raised capital. However, it was revealed that the company is working towards developing an ability to learn continually from new information for its voice-based systems. 

Dan Gwak from Point72 Ventures said, “By developing novel, continuously learning AI capabilities, we think TENYX has the potential to revolutionize the enterprise customer service market, allowing a wide range of businesses to dramatically improve the efficiency and effectiveness with which they help their customers.” 

Read More: NVIDIA fined $5.5 million for allegedly hiding the number of gaming GPUs sold to crypto miners

Voice-based system developing startup TENYX was founded by Itamar Arel, a former computer science professor at the University of Tennessee, and Ron Chrisley, the head of the cognitive science program at Sussex University in 2021. 

Co-founder and CEO of TENYX, Itamar Arel, said, “Conversational AI adoption has been hampered by deployment complexity, challenges to scaling efficiently, and lack of consumer trust. Existing automation solutions for voice-based customer service remain brittle and lacking in their ability to understand and engage with customers.” 

He further added that due to the COVID-19 epidemic, call centers are experiencing workforce shortages, which presents an opportunity for the implementation of conversational AI technology. Customers are also expecting better and more consistent customer experiences, which may be met with sophisticated voice-based AI solutions. 

TENYX is backed by the team that created Apprente, which developed voice-activated units to automate ordering at drive-through restaurants. In 2019, Mcdonald’s acknowledged Apprente’s technology and acquired the company, and rebranded it to McD Tech Labs. 

However, recently IBM acquired McTech Labs to develop artificial intelligence technologies for revolutionizing the fast-food industry.