Every VC CX deal you need to know: September 4

Every week, CX Network publishes the top funding news from the CX and customer service start-up space with a focus on the firms CX and service leaders need to know about. 

This week, there's news from Capacity, Wonderful, Conveo, Instarc and Owner. 

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Capacity's unified AI-native CX platform raises $54m in Series E

The company behind the unified, AI-native customer experience platform Capacity, raised more than US$54 million in its Series E, bringing the total raised to almost $160 million.

While a huge portion of raised capital has gone into product development, Capacity has also pursued partnerships and strategic acquisitions, driving rapid growth of 20x in less than four years. 

The Series E investors have not been named publicly, however, American actress, author, entrepreneur, designer, philanthropist, and former fashion model Kathy Ireland is reported to have led the round. 

"We invest in people and companies that have a clear sense of purpose and the ability to execute on it," said Ireland. "Capacity has demonstrated both over the past year we've worked with them. I've seen firsthand the value the technology delivers, and it's clear there is a significant opportunity ahead for Capacity."

Capacity's solution addresses the challenges that have arisen for organizations that invested in AI through multiple point solutions. Its unified platform tackles the tech stack sprawl these organizations face as they now look to consolidate their stacks into a platform that supports AI across the entire business, and delivers measurable ROI, as Capacity claims to. 

In its Series E press announcement, the start-up reported it has surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). 

Salesforce among backers of Wonderful's $550m Series C

Amsterdam-based start-up Wonderful closed its $550 million Series C funding round this week, with Salesforce among the investors. 

Its AI operating system (OS) is designed to be modular and open because "enterprises shouldn't have to replace everything they already have to become AI-native", says CTO and co-founder Roey Lalazar. 

The round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from Salesforce and existing investors Index Ventures, IVP, Vine Ventures, 9Yards, and Bessemer Venture Partners. It takes the company to a valuation of $5 billion. 

"Customers can adopt whichever parts of the platform make the most sense, integrate them with existing systems, choose the best models for each workload, and retain ownership of everything they build. That openness preserves our customers' optionality, while keeping us accountable to stay at the frontier," Lalazar added. 

The Wonderful AI OS is the shared operating layer that coordinates agents, workflows, AI-native applications, enterprise context, integrations, and governed execution across the organization. 

It's open, model-agnostic and compatible with existing technology stacks, allowing enterprises to adopt new models and capabilities as the industry evolves, without continually rebuilding their stack or becoming dependent on a single provider. 
Enterprise context, integrations, governance, and reusable capabilities accumulate over time, making every new deployment faster and better governed than the last.

The AI OS includes a suite of key products:

• Managed workflows that automate complex end-to-end processes;
• Productivity agents that support employees and improve decision-making;
• AI-native applications that complement or replace legacy software; 
• Conversational agents that help enterprises serve and grow customers. 

Products can be deployed independently or combined within the same workflow, with shared governance, security, and orchestration across the platform.

Conveo raises $50m to advance AI-powered video interviews with consumers 

Conveo's Series A funding round raised $50 million last month as the start-up looks to advance what it describes as a "new category of enterprise software" for customer insights.

Its "consumer understanding infrastructure" gives every team a real-time picture of what consumers want. It isn't, however, classed as a VoC solution. 

Instead, Conveo describes its product as an "early warning system", an AI-powered research interview platform that conducts in-depth video conversations with thousands of real consumers in days instead of months. Its newest product, StoryLines, runs this research continuously on a brand's strategic topics, feeding the company's shared picture of its consumers and advancing Conveo from research tool to infrastructure.  

It has already secured multi-million-dollar enterprise deals and more than 400 enterprises – including more than 50 Fortune 500 brands such as Google, Unilever, AB InBev, and Canva – use Conveo to make marketing, product, and strategy decisions grounded in what consumers actually say and do.

The Series A included DST Global Partners, Balderton Capital, Visionaries, 6 Degrees Capital and Y Combinator and brings total funding to $55.8 million.

"With AI-moderated interviews at this scale, you have hundreds of hours of consumers talking about your product, your brand, your competitors," said Niels Schillewaert, head of research at Conveo and former president of ESOMAR. "The platform structures all of it automatically, giving teams a constantly updated answer grounded in the original sources before anyone asks the question." 

StoryLines holds in-depth conversations at a scale and speed no human team could match. There are three specific USPs that allow organizations to deeply understand their target market: 

• In-home studies allow consumers to show, on camera, how they actually live with and use products.
• In-depth conversations with more than 1,000 consumers a month across multiple markets, covering emerging needs and behaviors, pricing, and brand.
• New research formats supercharged via an AI-moderator.

For a global insights industry worth $153 billion, that is currently exploring synthetic data as a solution to low-engagement and a lack of research depth, Conveo's solution breaks the mold.  

Instarc raises $1.35 million Seed to advance reg-tech platform in South Africa

Estonian reg-tech startup Instarc raised $1.35 million in its Seed round, led by HFO Investments with Athena Capital and Option 3 Capital advising on the transaction.
The funds will support the commercial rollout of its cloud-native compliance platform, which handles digital customer onboarding, identity and ownership verification, due diligence, document management, regulatory reporting, and audit records.

"We founded Instarc on the belief that compliance should not be a bottleneck," said chief executive officer Jonathan Revell, who added that the platform allows regulated organizations to "onboard customers faster, reach revenue sooner, reduce operational friction and scale with confidence".

The platform is initially focused on South Africa, where the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) regulates customer identification, due diligence, and reporting. Instarc offers APIs to integrate these functions with institutions' existing systems.
Rather than deploying a standalone system, Instarc is designed to fold compliance into an organization's existing operating model, allowing institutions to configure customer journeys and workflows to their products and risk requirements, then adjust as rules change.

Owner – the AI CMO for restaurants – raises $240m 

Owner raised $240 million in its Series D round as it pursues its ambition to become the technology and marketing platform that effectively runs the digital side of an independent restaurant.

Led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, the round also included existing investors Meritech, Redpoint, Headline and Jack Altman.

Owner initially helped independent restaurants build better websites, generate direct online orders and reduce their dependence on third-party marketplaces. Now with AI, it is striving to become a trusted partner in these businesses, taking on the role of AI CMO and CTO and managing websites, online ordering, mobile apps, CRM, customer support, POS and AI phone ordering from a single platform.

The idea is that restaurant owners should be free to run the hospitality side of their business. So, instead of simply bolting new capabilities to its platform – such as loyalty, POS, or online ordering – Owner has developed an agent-based model allowing everything to happen autonomously. 

For example, Owner says its agents can be tasked with a menu item promotion and the agent can create the promotion, update the website, generate the creative, build the campaign and publish it. The same system can also answer phone calls, take orders, respond to reviews and emails and handle customer support.

Quick links

• Every VC CX deal you need to know: August 28
• Every VC CX deal you need to know: August 21
• Every VC CX deal you need to know: August 14

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