This article originally appeared in our sister publication the Boston Business Journal.
An early-stage startup that last year added a former executive from HubSpot Inc.to its team is raising funding from a couple of high-profile investors.
AdmitHub, an edtech startup with 50 employees that uses artificial intelligence to build conversational software for college students, secured new investments from Salesforce Ventures and Google's Assistant Investments program that brought total funding for the company to roughly $10 million, according to AdmitHub CEO Andrew "Drew" Magliozzi.
Before Salesforce Ventures and Google Assistant Investments invested in AdmitHub, total funding had been around $8 million, including a 2019 Series A round led by education impact investor University Ventures.
Launched by Magliozzi and Kirk Daulerio in 2014, AdmitHub set up shop to help colleges and universities solve the problem of students being granted admission to college but not actually showing up to campus due to a lack of resources helping them navigate the process. Based in Downtown Crossing, AdmitHub sells to colleges and universities a virtual assistant that reminds students via text messages to complete their enrollment tasks and improve retention rates between semesters.
Magliozzi said the company is working with approximately 100 colleges and universities, with four or five of those in Massachusetts.
The Google Assistant Investments program, which resembles Amazon’s Alexa Fund, is one of the entities through which Google invests in companies. Parent company Alphabet has three main investing arms: GV (formerly known as Google Ventures), CapitalG (for later-stage deals) and Gradient Ventures (for companies working on artificial intelligence).
Salesforce Ventures, the venture wing of Salesforce.com Inc., also participated in the latest investment round of Boston-based Cogito Corp., an MIT-born artificial intelligence company with 160 full-time employees.
Magliozzi said he plans to use the latest investments to grow the team, doubling down on sales, marketing and engineering.
