Sydney-based AI startup Lorikeet has successfully raised an additional $9 million in funding, bringing its total raised to $14 million since its inception. The latest round was led by Blackbird, with participation from existing investors Square Peg and Skip Capital. This new investment comes just four months after Lorikeet secured $7.3 million in seed funding and values the company at an impressive $100 million.

Founders and Vision

Founded in mid-2023, Lorikeet was created by Steve Hind, a former Stripe executive, and Jamie Hall, a former senior engineer at Google AI. The platform is designed to address complex customer service issues, leveraging artificial intelligence to handle intricate, multi-conditional problems that were previously only solvable by humans. Specializing in highly regulated sectors like healthcare, finance, and cryptocurrency, Lorikeet aims to transform customer support by providing AI-powered solutions that can replace traditional human agents.

Funding Allocation and Growth Strategy

The latest round of funding will be directed toward expanding Lorikeet’s engineering team, particularly in Sydney, and supporting the company’s aggressive growth plans, particularly in the United States. As Lorikeet scales its operations, it intends to enhance its AI-driven platform to offer even more powerful solutions to its customers. The team’s goal is to create an AI platform capable of tackling complex customer inquiries in sectors such as healthcare, finance, and cryptocurrency, where conventional AI tools have struggled to deliver satisfactory results.

Client Success and Product Impact

Lorikeet’s platform has already achieved remarkable success with several high-profile clients. For example, Eucalyptus, a leading health tech firm, saw its support volume double within a year without increasing its headcount, while improving its customer satisfaction score (CSAT) by 10 percentage points. Additionally, Magic Eden, a significant player in the NFT space, recently switched to Lorikeet from a competing AI solution and saw improvements in customer satisfaction at double the rate of their previous system.

Innovative AI Architecture for Complex Workflows

Hind, who serves as Lorikeet’s CEO, emphasized that the company is not satisfied with merely using AI for basic functions like summarizing FAQs. Instead, Lorikeet’s intelligent graph architecture was specifically built from the ground up to solve complex customer service workflows in industries where traditional AI solutions have fallen short. This innovative approach is what differentiates Lorikeet from other platforms, which often rely on general-purpose models such as those developed by OpenAI.

Customer Support Beyond Conversational AI

The company’s AI platform is engineered to identify both its capabilities and limitations, avoiding incorrect responses or engagement in highly sensitive topics. Hall, the company’s CTO, noted that effective customer support requires much more than conversational AI, and Lorikeet’s technology is uniquely capable of both resolving complex inquiries and knowing when to defer to human intervention. This capacity to handle intricate customer issues in a regulated environment has been a key factor in Lorikeet’s rapid growth.

Investor Confidence and Market Potential

Blackbird partner Tom Humphrey, who led the funding round, highlighted the tremendous potential of AI in customer support. “Support is perhaps the highest impact and lowest hanging fruit opportunity for enterprise adoption of AI,” he said, noting that the market for AI-driven customer service solutions is vast and largely untapped. With Lorikeet’s advanced technology, the company is poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of AI-powered customer support across multiple industries.

Outperforming Competitors in a Competitive Market

Lorikeet’s ability to outperform larger, well-funded competitors has been a point of pride for the team. Hind pointed out that Stripe’s Patrick Collison once observed that turning billions of dollars into good software is a remarkable challenge, and Lorikeet is achieving that with a small, focused team. By staying committed to solving hard problems and helping its users, Lorikeet has shown that even in the face of much larger competitors, a nimble and dedicated team can outcompete the giants.

With this new round of funding and a clear vision for the future, Lorikeet is well-positioned to continue its impressive growth trajectory. As the company expands its engineering and customer success teams, it aims to revolutionize customer service with its AI-powered platform. With strong backing from investors and a proven track record of success, Lorikeet is on track to become a leader in the AI customer support space, reshaping how businesses across the globe interact with their customers.