7 Outstanding Artificial Intelligence Application Helping To Change Businesses’ Workflow

Being no longer a strange term, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an irreversible trend in the development process and achieving high efficiency for businesses. Grasping this trend, startups in the world have been developing AI-driven technology solutions, which serve the purpose of optimizing processes in many aspects, thus improving businesses’ workload and enhancing their productivity.

Optimize customers’ shopping experience with 3D product visualization technology from Nfinite

In today’s times when we are buying almost everything online, it would be useful if consumers could see products online in all their dimensions. Founded in 2017, the French platform allows retailers to create and display 3D product visuals through CGI technology. This would help potential customers understand the product’s look and dimensions before they buy it. 

Alexandre de Vigan, founder and CEO, nfinite said: “e-commerce is increasingly virtual and consumers yearn for immersive online shopping and personalised experiences, yet e-merchandising—the link between the product, the consumer, and the online cart—is fragmented. So, we helped fix it by building a one-stop solution for creating, displaying and managing unlimited product visuals almost instantly.”

Making this a reality, Paris-based e-commerce and visualisation company nfinite has raised $100 million in a Series B funding led by Insight Partners. The new raise is the startup’s second funding in just four months. It had earlier announced a $15 million Series A round in February this year. With the new cash, the company has now raised more than $122 million to date.

Findable helps corporates simplify facilities management process with automate building documentation technology

Europe’s 46 million non-residential buildings require documentation detailing their construction, management, maintenance and at times inspection. Digitally organised and searchable building documentation enables confidence in building data, reducing commercial risk and costs. Yet, inefficient access to building documentation is estimated to cost building owners €2 per square metre annually in the continent.

Founded in 2020, the Norwegian startup digitises building documentation, using AI to automatically categorise documents and allows users to locate specific information via a search function. The software can analyse headlines, pictures and drawings, and quickly conclude what the document shows and how it should be organised. This reduces the time consuming and manual process of managing complex documents, enabling construction companies and facility managers to streamline the process of inspections and certifications.

Fredrik Halmøy Wisløff, CEO at Findable said: “Building documentation, its organisation and storage, is a tedious task. Even today it’s still a largely manual process involving stacks of paper and piles of ring binders.  Similar to the software that automatically sorts photo albums using face recognition, our technology quickly identifies the key data and makes it easier for relevant parties to access the information that matters.”

Sebastian Peck, partner at KOMPAS added: “The facilities management sector in Europe is a massive market undergoing its own digital transformation. Findable’s solution provides easy access to the right building documentation, supporting workflow automation and thereby removing a major bottleneck.”

Oslo-based startup that automates building documentation using AI, Findable has raised €2 million in funding to change the scenario. The seed round was led by KOMPAS, with participation from Construct Venture and Malling & Co Venture. The funding will allow the platform to scale its product and grow its customer base as it mulls international expansion.

Checkstep makes its effort to tackle propagation of misinformation on media platforms with contextual content moderation technology 

As the amount of abuse on online platforms continues to grow, major questions are still unanswered – both ethical and technical. How companies can best keep their users safe, particularly with new regulations being enacted around the globe to try to tackle the problem.

Founded in 2020, the company aims to tackle propagation of misinformation during the Covid pandemic. The company has since expanded its focus to meet the other needs of its customers, covering a wider range of harms such as hate speech, Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), bullying and spam. Recently, it developed the essential features to also include copyright infringement management capabilities.

Guillaume Bouchard, CEO of Checkstep said: “With the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, getting content moderation right is not only a priority for the democracies in the world, but also a business imperative for any platform hosting user content. The problem has been exacerbated by the pandemic when in-person interactions became mostly online. Today, every major world event is a new moderation issue: the storming of the Capitol, the responses to the George Floyd killing, the racist comments following the EuroCup, the war in Ukraine, etc. Despite a total addressable market of over $3 billion, existing technology is insufficient to support the needs.”

Looking into the future of AI content moderation by developing machine learning models and integrating third-party solutions to suit clients’ needs, UK-based startup Checkstep has closed a $5 million seed round. Co-led by Dawn Capital and Form Ventures with participation from founders of GoCardLess, Indeed and Redbus Media Group, the investment will be used to develop Checkstep’s technology and brand awareness.

Norman Fiore, general partner at Dawn Capital said: “Checkstep is a great example of technology being used for good. As the regularity of harmful abuse on online platforms continues to grow, the ability to ethically moderate users and content is becoming increasingly important. We are seeing this increased scrutiny at government level, with legislation such as the recent Online Safety Bill looking to tackle the issue head on. Checkstep provides a solution to this issue, and we are excited to be able to support it at this important stage of its development.”

Helps businesses to create better customer experiences with human-to-AI conversations application from OpenDialog

Changing the way humans use computer systems, the conversational AI sector is expected to grow to an estimated $46 billion market globally by 2028. Founded in 2019, the AI platform aims to design, develop and deploy smarter human-to-machine conversations. According to the company, its SaaS-based product with no-code conversation design helps businesses to create better customer experiences and is deployable immediately.

OpenDialog co-founder Terry Walby said: “Moving beyond the often painful experiences delivered by current chatbots and AI assistants, OpenDialog will enable businesses and consumers to realise the game-changing potential of conversational AI. The market has been crying out for a solution like this, one that not only drives real operational efficiencies but also enhances and joins up customer experience across a wide range of channels.”

Co-founder Ronald Ashri added: “Conversational AI is changing how humans use computer systems. OpenDialog, through a novel combination of AI techniques, introduces a new approach for facilitating natural, context-rich conversations with machines and makes these capabilities easily accessible to all enterprises.”

Betting big on this growth, London-based open source conversational experience platform OpenDialog has raised $5 million for creation of scalable and secure conversational applications. The seed round of funding, raised in only four weeks, will enable the startup to develop its product and support its expansion plans in the U.K. and other major markets globally.

Parloa helps to change the way businesses communicate with their customers by conversational AI platform

For far too long, customer care service numbers have been anything but outdated. Users are forced to call numbers in a so-called touch-tone menu and confronted with long waiting times, while agents are obliged to spend 30-40% of their time doing repetitive tasks like authentications or routings. In order to solve this problem, startup Parloa is enabling businesses to easily integrate AI technology into their customer service for unique consumer experiences at all relevant customer service touchpoints.

The platform combines automated speech recognition and natural language understanding to enable companies to build automated dialogues for phone, chat, voice assistants and messenger – all in one place. The company claims its AI setup understands the same amount of words and contexts as a call centre agent. It follows a low code and API-first approach and hence can be seamlessly integrated into any tech stack and used and trained by any employee – even without any technical background. 

Malte Kosub, co-founder and CEO, Parloa said: “The lack of efficiency in many call centres not only results in frustrating customer experiences and unhappy agents, harming a company’s reputation significantly but also leads to very high costs for businesses. With Parloa, we provide a unique AI solution for companies to make their customer service smarter and more cost-efficient leading to happier and more loyal customers.”

Stefan Ostwald, co-founder, CTO and CPO, Parloa added: “We initially started as an agency for AI and built Parloa’s technology out of our own cash flow and profits. After having received huge demand for our software, we decided to make a spin-off and turned Parloa into a SaaS platform and successfully bootstrapped the company over the course of the past years into a multi-million business.”

Aiming to put an end to the call centre madness and change the way businesses communicate with their customers, Parloa has raised €4 million in funding. The round saw the participation of VC firms such as Amsterdam-based Newion, Munich-based Senovo and angel investors, including Michael Wax and Erik Muttersbach (co-founders of Forto), Nicolas Peters (co-founder Signavio). The new cash will enable the startup to scale its operations, expand its international footprint and help companies worldwide to make their call centres more cost-efficient while enabling them to increase customer loyalty.

With AI-based solution, social data platform Citibeats helps organisations identify future trends 

Citibeats – a startup launched in Barcelona – develops AI solutions that combine natural language processing and machine learning to identify social trends and can deliver early warnings on critical issues. Through data privacy and bias reduction algorithms, the startup is aiming to aid governments, multilateral organisations, and private companies foresee changes over the horizon.

The easiest way to think about Citibeat’s offer is comparable to brand monitoring, a process that focuses mainly on social listening and then reacting, i.e. with a significant lag. With its AI-based solution, Citibeats virtually eliminates the processing lag and is able to detect and analyse complex narratives from a wide range of sources, often with a multitude of various topics interwoven.

Citibeats has been named amongst the 100 most promising Technology Pioneers of 2022 by the World Economic Forum. “Being acknowledged as a Technology Pioneer by WEF is a real honor for Citibeats,” said CEO and Founder Ivan Caballero. “It is like a seal of quality, a trust badge that confirms and further validates the value of our technology and our ethical approach towards AI. We work with WHO, IDB, UNESCO, UNDP, and World Bank on large projects across many countries and are excited to bring this knowledge of incorporating citizens’ voices and needs into decision-making to WEF.”

“Citibeats and its fellow pioneers are at the forefront of industries that are critical to solving some of our world’s most complex issues today. We look forward to their contribution to the World Economic Forum in its commitment to improving the state of the world,” commented WEF’s Saemoon Yoon.

Change businesses’ workflow with AI-driven virtual assistant from DRUID 

The new business environment that has emerged over the past two years has resulted in the rapid acceptance and an ever-increasing need for AI-powered intelligent virtual assistants. DRUID’s – a Bucharest-based AI-driven conversational business applications allow businesses to enhance the user experience for both customers and employees.

Liviu Drăgan, CEO, DRUID said: “We aim to deliver a virtual assistant for every employee. Our goal is to empower businesses worldwide in using DRUID solutions to secure customer loyalty and boost employee retention for businesses of all sizes. We are going beyond the present typical constraints of conversational solutions to create a new category of products, conversational business applications (CBA), that will enable AI to drive complex processes and help people achieve better business results.”

Kristjan Laannemaa, founding partner, Karma VC added: “DRUID is our first investment in Romania. UiPath has let the whole world know about the great potential of the Romanian tech ecosystem and we are glad that we have an opportunity to work with Liviu Dragan and his team on another fast-growing software company.”

DRUID has raised $15 million to accelerate its growth and expansion across Europe and North America. The startup will also add new capabilities to its conversational AI offering and further develop its user experience. The round was led by Karma Ventures and Hoxton Ventures, joined by GapMinder and four other investors from Germany, Switzerland, Poland, and Romania. Looking at international expansion, the company plans to open new offices in France and Germany by the end of 2022 and consolidate its existing presence in the U.K. and U.S.