Boston-based Cogito can count on two new assets: a startup that can help its mission to provide better employee engagement tools for contact centers, plus extra money.
The AI software startup announced on Wednesday it raised $8 million in additional growth equity funding. It also acquired Tenacity, a company born in an entrepreneurship class at MIT that moved to Seattle in 2015.
The new growth equity funding, which included investments from new partners Hearst Ventures and Battery Ventures, followed the $37 million in Series C funding announced in July and another investment from Avaya announced in October this year.
The latest round brings the total amount of Cogito’s Series C funding to $45 million. The company said it will use the funds to expand its go-to-market strategy.
Cogito provides an AI-powered software that analyzes a conversation as it happens and provides real-time guidance combined with an immediate measure of customer perception. The tool helps call center professionals provide better service and make better sales calls.
Like Cogito, Tenacity developed and deployed employee engagement tools for contact centers and generated unique data and insights based on years of research and development, and deployments in large scale call centers. Through this acquisition, Cogito said it stands to gain a wealth of insights that will improve its machine learning-based systems.
"Employees today increasingly feel stress from the demands of modern life while enterprises are looking to more effectively connect with their customers to drive growth," said Joshua Feast, CEO of Cogito, in a statement. "Emotional intelligence is a critical skill to enhancing employee well-being, improving productivity and enabling organizational empathy. We are taking action today to meet this market demand with AI that augments people’s natural abilities.”
