Webio's co-founders. From left, CEO Cormac O'Neill, chief revenue and chief marketing officer Mark Oppermann and chief strategy officer Paul Sweeney. Image: Gemma Day
The Dublin-based company raised $4m last year and has ambitious growth plans to grow its AI platform across Europe.
Irish start-up Webio has raised €2.5m from new and existing investors to grow its business, which supports customer service tasks with AI.
The funding round was led by Hambro Perks, which provided €1.75m of venture debt to the start-up. Additional funding came from existing investor Finch Capital.
Founded in 2016, the company has amassed clients in the credit and collections industry thanks to its ‘conversational AI’ platform, which is designed to help companies communicate with customers.
This platform uses a combination of automated chatbots, natural language processing and machine learning to deliver a scalable form of personalised customer engagement. It can be used across messaging services such as Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS and Alexa.
Some of the companies that use the Webio platform in the UK and Ireland include The Very Group, Studio Retail, Hoist Finance, DCBL, NCO Europe and Anglian Water.
The start-up has grown over the years, being boosted by multiple funding rounds. Last year, Webio secured $4m in Series A funding to scale up its business.
This came roughly one year after the start-up raised €500,000 in pre-Series A funding from Finch Capital, topping off an investment round at €1.5m.
The Dublin-based company has expanded over the years with subsidiaries in the UK and Poland. Webio is also backed by Enterprise Ireland and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.
Webio revealed ambitious growth plans last year, with a goal of tripling its R&D team and expanding its sales, marketing and customer success teams to meet rising demand in the UK and Europe. The company plans to use the latest batch of funding to fuel its growth.
“We are delighted to welcome Webio to the Hambro Perks Growth Debt Fund portfolio,” said Hambro Perks partner Stephen Fahy. “Webio is a dynamic and exciting IP-rich company that we are thrilled to be backing, and we look forward to supporting their growth plans over the coming years.”
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