Conversational analytics is another growing space. The latest news there is that contact center AI vendor Observe.AI bought ScopeAI, which automatically extracts insights from chat, email, and social conversations. Related items we’ve already reported include: ZenDesk’s purchase of Cleverly, Level AI’s launch with $15 million funding, Involve.AI’s $16 million Series A, and Verint’s purchase of Conversocial.
Headless commerce makes it easier to deploy custom ecommerce front-ends by providing the underlying processing technology. It’s an important trend but there’s too much happening to cover in depth. So here are some headlines to give you a flavor: Shopistry has integrated with the Square payments platform and joined its App Marketplace. Fast Simon has expanded its Shopify integration with a new shopping optimization tools. OneView Commerce has made its transaction engine available on Microsoft Azure. You get the idea.
Messaging platforms are also hot, although I have just one item today: Netherlands-based Trengo has raised a $36 million Series A. Trengo combines customer and employee communications across multiple messaging channels, so it also plays in the equally-hot collaboration platform space.
Salesforce is buying Airkit.ai, which builds low-code, AI-powered e-commerce customer service agents. You might have thought Salesforce could already do that, but presumably Airkit does it better. It doesn’t hurt that the company founders sold a previous business to Salesforce, the company was partly funded by Salesforce Ventures, and the product is already listed on AppExchange. Price was not announced.