Kiwi AI startup Ambit raises NZ$1 million for Australian push

Ambit, the conversational artificial intelligence platform, has raised NZ$1M to accelerate expansion into Australia where it is targeting new clients in the retail, utilities and financial services sectors.

The capital raise attracted new investors including Quidnet Ventures, a New Zealand deep tech VC founded by Mark Bregman, PhD, a former CTO of global firms NetApp, Symantec and Veritas Software. Satish Gupta, a former Vice President at Lenovo and IBM, and now a partner at Quidnet Ventures, has also invested in his personal capacity.

The business is already providing automated customer services at scale for Australian clients including ASX-listed Laybuy, Glassons, which has 35 local stores, and ComExposium. The new capital will be used to increase the feet on the ground in Australia to ramp up its local customer base.

Tim Warren, Ambit’s cofounder and CEO, said the AI-powered conversational platform is the brain behind human-like conversations delivered by chat bots, and digital employees.

“Conversational AI adoption among Australian eCommerce, utilities and financial services brands is being driven by consumer demand for 24/7 online support, just as businesses face staff shortages in contact centres and rising shareholder expectations to manage costs.,” he said.

Warren said his startup’s world-leading natural language technology enables customer service teams to engage with any enquiries – all day, every day.

He founded Ambit in 2016 after seeing how many companies found it difficult to get back to customers in a timely manner and set out to build a low-code solution where every conversation with a customer, partner, or staff member counts.

The vision was to provide real-time customer service at scale to process unlimited conversations and Ambit is now used by some of New Zealand and Australia’s largest organisations across a multitude of industries.

Warren said the conversational AI platform “ensures that customers are always having the right conversation at the right time”.