CEO Eoghan McCabe said the software company he co-founded is going to ‘lean in as hard as we can’ and deploy ‘very large amounts’ of investment across its AI-powered software products.
Intercom has revealed plans to create up to 75 new jobs, as CEO and co-founder Eoghan McCabe said the Irish-founded company wants to “aggressively” invest in AI products.
In an internal email shared on X, McCabe said that Intercom is making a “big new bet” on maximising its chance of “enjoying the giant opportunity in front of us” that is AI and its potential, particularly in customer service.
“We are the early leader in this early space,” he wrote in the email sent to employees of the San Francisco-headquartered company. “The big guys and the little guys have their eyes on us and are following us. I know this because I meet with their CEOs. You can see it in their decisions too.”
McCabe, who returned to Intercom in late 2022 after standing down as CEO in 2020, said that he wants the company to “be the biggest and best and first” in the space.
“To this end, we’re going to lean in as hard as we can and deploy very large amounts of our cash reserves against this effort. Specifically to accelerate our Horizon 2 plan to build and sell the next major version of Fin, which I’ve been calling Fin X.”
McCabe said Intercom will invest an extra $94m in AI as part of its plans to infuse its software platform with AI, making tasks across sales, marketing and customer support easier.
I announced internally last night that we’re going to invest an extra ~$100M to bring a new AI technology we’re dreaming about to market that we’re calling Fin X. Running a scaled company on your own cashflows brings wonderful discipline, and when I returned to @intercom in late… pic.twitter.com/ocQUD1lAAU
— Eoghan McCabe (@eoghan) May 13, 2024
The investment will bring its machine learning team based in Dublin from 19 to 72 employees, creating 53 new jobs. “This will require an epic lift to make happen but will dramatically increase our ability to ship great Al tech fast,” McCabe told staff.
Intercom will also create an additional 22 jobs across the rest of its R&D efforts. In total, the company will create 75 new roles.
“I want you to know how seriously we’re taking our ambition to win here. And also to have context for the continued push on productivity and our talent bar that you will see from us over the next while,” McCabe added.
“Winning in this game will require aggression on all fronts, not just with our capital. We have no room for comfort or complacency or mediocrity. We have some of these things in some areas of the company today. I want you to know we’re aware of this and that we already have plans in motion to address all of it.”
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