The MIT Media Lab customer call analytics spinout has now raised $45m for a series C round featuring investors including Salesforce Ventures, Avaya and Hearst Ventures.
Cogito, a US-based customer contact analytics software developer leveraging Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) research, has increased its series C round to $45m with $8m from investors including investment firm Battery Ventures.
Hearst Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of media group Hearst, also backed the extension, adding to an initial $37m series C tranche in July 2018 led by investment bank Goldman Sachs’ Growth Equity unit.
OpenView Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of enterprise software provider Salesforce, also took part in the first tranche, before business communications technology provider Avaya was unveiled as an additional participant in October 2018.
Spun out in 2007 from MIT’s Media Lab, Cogito markets an artificial intelligence-driven voice analytics platform that scans phone calls at customer contact centres in real-time to provide the agent with guidance and feedback on the customer’s experience.
The latest funding will help pursue its go-to-market strategy, which includes a recent extension to target retail and banking contact centres, as the spinout looks to carve out a reputation for “emotionally intelligent” customer relations software.
Cogito has now raised about $70.6m in funding overall, having previously closed a $19.1m series B round with $4.1m from unnamed backers in January 2017.
OpenView led the initial $15m series B close in November 2016 with participation from Salesforce Ventures and Romulus Capital, following a $1m sum from unspecified backers in May 2016, according to a regulatory filing.
Salesforce Ventures had also backed Cogito’s $5.5m series A round led by Romulus the previous year. Cogito attracted $1m in seed capital in 2014, seven years after landing a $20,000 investment from Summer@Highland.
