Ultimate.ai raises $6.5M to provide multilingual customer service automation to businesses

Ultimate.ai, the Helsinki/Berlin-based startup that provides multilingual customer service automation to businesses, has raised $6.5M in new funding, to grow its platform that gives customer service agents the AI tools they need to provide faster, smarter responses. The round is led by the company’s existing investors, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures and Maki.vc.

In addition, the EU granted research funding as part of Horizon 2020, a program committed to
backing Europe’s leading deep technology businesses. Ultimate.ai has previously raised $300 thounsands angel investment and a $1.3M seed round in 2018.

Founded in 2016 by Reetu Kainulainen, Jaakko Pasanen, and Markus Rautio, Ultimate.ai is one of the leading solution for enterprise customer service automation. Its multilingual,
intelligent layer automates repetitive customer service cases and guides agents with answer
recommendations through complex tasks. Ultimate.ai has partnered with leading CRM providers
Salesforce, Zendesk and Freshworks. The company is based in Helsinki and Berlin and
supports leading businesses including Finnair, Telia and ADAC.

Ultimate.ai’s European founding story has given it a technical advantage in the market,
attracting EU interest and prompting existing investors to double down. Founded in Finland, the
business faced a defining challenge: there was no AI technology capable of handling the
complex Finnish language. Leveraging recent breakthroughs in deep learning, the founders built
the leading fully-language agnostic AI platform for customer service. Today Ultimate.ai provides
its multilingual customer service automation to multinational enterprises including Telia, ADAC
and Finnair.

“We were astonished by the hiring success, technology advancement and go to market speed
the team has shown just one year after the seed round,” says Jasper Masemann, Principal at
HV. “Ultimate follows Kasparov’s law and augments every customer support agent no matter
how good they are. That is one of the biggest market potential you can find nowadays. It was
obvious to HV to double down on this opportunity.”

The financing comes at a time of significant growth for the company, which celebrates its third
anniversary on November 4th. In the 12 months since raising Seed, Ultimate.ai has seen its
revenue grow tenfold. A notable portion of this growth is driven by existing clients, as they
expand customer service automation to new geographies and channels, a capability
Ultimate.ai’s multilingual technology is uniquely positioned to provide. This growth has enabled
the business to triple their team, which now lists 30 people.

“We believe strongly in a customer-first mindset; a commitment we share with our clients. Keeping the experiences of support agents and customers at the heart of our AI is core to building a world-leading product,” says Reetu Kainulainen, CEO and co-Founder of Ultimate.ai.

“We are excited about the impact we are having and will continue to improve customer
experiences around the world and establish Ultimate.ai as the market leader for customer
service automation.”