SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jul 26, 2016) - Mezi (www.mezi.com), the leading AI-powered chatbot shopping app, announced today it has raised $9 million in Series A funding. Investors in this round include previous investor Nexus Venture Partners and new investors Saama Capital and American Express Ventures. Amit Singhal, former SVP and Head of Google Search, and Gokul Rajaram, Product Engineering Lead at Square, are joining as angel investors.
Mezi blends artificial intelligence and human expertise to learn shopping preferences and create a seamless, personalized shopping experience over messaging. The free app simulates the experience of shopping with your best friend through intelligent, humanistic chat conversations so engaging that over 40% of users return on a monthly basis to shop with Mezi. Since its launch in December 2015, Mezi has become the go-to daily shopping companion for users with over one million messages exchanged. Mezi simplifies mobile shopping by sifting through thousands of potential choices based on user price points, preferences, and learned habits. 25% of all purchases made through Mezi are for travel bookings, 21% for fashion items, and 15% for gifts for friends and family. Mezi bots are able to understand a wide range of requests and can even mimic speech patterns by learning from user conversations enabled through consciousness design and artificial intelligence.
"We are very honored that Mezi has become a member of our users' close-knit network of friends to shop with. With Mezi, we have created the most advanced shopping bots that can anticipate our users' needs and wants by harnessing the latest advances in artificial intelligence and consciousness design. We look forward to continuing to provide a shopping experience that delights and amazes our users with these world-class investors behind us," commented Mezi Co-founder and CEO, Swapnil Shinde.
Mezi is powered by Smart Connect and Smart Assist, a proprietary technology platform, built using artificial intelligence, deep learning, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to streamline intent detection, automatic replies, expert workflows, reduce response times, and provide personalized product recommendations. Mezi bots are able to handle 80 percent of common travel and flower requests from end-to-end without the need for human intervention in under two-minutes. The result is a rapid-fire conversational experience that makes them indistinguishable from human assistants. The investment will be used to support the company's growth and accelerate Mezi's product and artificial intelligence (AI) technology development around conversational commerce, AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and machine learning.
"Mezi has created an intuitive platform that helps consumers unlock something we all want -- a personal assistant in the palm of your hand, whether you need to book travel, purchase a gift or buy a new wardrobe," said Rohit Bodas, Partner, American Express Ventures. "The underlying technology behind Mezi's bot combines the human touch with the power of artificial intelligence. We're pleased to support Mezi with this investment."
"We see the next generation of unicorns emerging from the chatbot and artificial intelligence space, and Mezi is trailblazing this market by developing core technologies that produce the most humanistic and engaging experience of any chatbot to-date," commented Ash Lilani, Managing Partner and Co-Founder Saama Capital. "Our investment in Mezi reflects our belief in their core technology and their ability to shatter the vending-machine experience of past bots and provide a clearly superior product that delivers a truly personal experience for every user."
"Artificial intelligence has become deeply integrated into our daily lives -- from climate control to smarter search -- pushing technology into new frontiers. Mezi elevates AI to the next level by uniting human intelligence with machine intelligence that shatters today's current standard," said Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners. "We look forward to our partnership with Mezi, to further the landscape of AI-human interaction and change everyday life for the better."
Mezi is available on the iOS App Store and SMS (415-915-7798).
About Mezi
Mezi is your personal shopping assistant, powered by the world's smartest chatbots and human guided experts. Just send a message to Mezi whenever you need to buy something and let Mezi take care of the research, present you with options, and help you place the order. Combining the best of human expertise and artificial intelligence, Mezi makes getting exactly the right product as simple as asking a question. Founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneurs Swapnil Shinde and Snehal Shinde, Mezi is now available on iOS and via SMS. Learn more at www.mezi.com.
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