Irish AI company EdgeTier raises €1.5m in funding

EdgeTier, an Irish start-up using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve customer service, has raised €1.5 million in a new funding round.

The investment is to be used to to increase research and development efforts in its AI assistant known as Arthur, and for further international expansion.

Arthur uses AI, analytics and automation to guide call centre staff through complex customer queries, resulting in speedier and more accurate responses.

Founded in 2015 by Shane Lynn, Bert Lehane and Ciarán Tobin, the company recently edged out rival start-ups Webio, Data Chemist, VRAI and UrbanFox to win Enterprise Ireland's 'digital disruptor' award. Last year the company also won 'best start-up' at AI Ireland's awards and 'best use of data science in a start-up' at the DatSci awards.

Tech review: Electric scooter is fun, portable but not that light

---

Mid-range smartphones could be a far more savvy choice

---

Twitter clamps down on ‘dehumanising language’ aimed at religious groups

---

EU’s highest court asked to invalidate main Facebook data channel

---

“This funding is a terrific enabler of our vision to revolutionise customer care through human-centric AI. Organisations are running out of road to automate contacts using self-service portals or bots and as a result need to use AI internally to improve efficiency and customer understanding,” said Mr Lynn, the company’s chief executive.

“With this funding, a proven product and 6,000 contact centres to target in the UK alone, we’re ideally poised to take advantage of this huge opportunity,” he added.

Venture capita

The investment was led by venture capital firm Episode 1 in conjunction with Dublin-based Act Venture Capital and Enterprise Ireland.

Episode 1 is a London-based early-stage VC that manages a £60 million enterprise capital fund, investing between £250,000 and £1 million into high-potential software-based businesses with significant operations in the UK. It has backed more than 50 start-ups to date including the well-known online estate agent Emoov and Scurri, the Wexford-based company logistics company led by Rory O'Connor.

Act, which this week announced it had led at €5.5 million funding round for Dublin-based VideoElephant, is one of the Republic's oldest tech-focused VC firms, having raised €450 million across multiple funds.

Its portfolio includes Channelsight, Cubic Telecom, Arralis, Silver Cloud Health and data analytics company Corvil, which was recently acquired by US technology company Pico for an undisclosed sum.