Rasa Raises $30 Million Series C Co-led by StepStone Group and PayPal Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Accel and Basis Set Ventures for Enterprise Conversational AI

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Rasa Series C Investors - StepStone Group, PayPal Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Basis Set Ventures (Graphic: Business Wire)

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RASA RAISES $30 MILLION SERIES C CO-LED BY STEPSTONE GROUP AND PAYPAL VENTURES, ANDREESSEN HOROWITZ, ACCEL AND BASIS SET VENTURES FOR ENTERPRISE CONVERSATIONAL AI

Rasa, a leading generative conversational AI platform today announced the completion of its $30 million Series C funding round, co-led by StepStone Group and PayPal Ventures, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Accel, and Basis Set Ventures.

“This investment accelerates our lead in the market, and fuels our drive to redefine what is possible for businesses using generative AI-powered chat and voice platforms at scale,” said Melissa Gordon, Rasa CEO. “With our technology, we’re well-positioned to transform how businesses interact with their customers, making every conversation impactful and personal. We will use the funding to advance our technological leadership and strengthen our market presence.”

Dr. Alan Nichol, Rasa Co-Founder and CTO, added, “At Rasa we’ve reinvented how conversational AI works. While many in the industry claim to incorporate generative AI, often it’s merely an addition of LLMs onto their existing platforms.”

Rasa continues to deliver on its mission to empower the world’s largest brands to address people’s needs with open and extensible conversation⁠al AI. Rasa powers sophisticated and robust AI assistants aligned with customers’ business logic that provide meaningful and practical user engagement. The recent launches of Rasa Pro and Rasa Studio with CALM (Conversational AI with Language Models) deliver a major innovation that combines the flexibility, nuanced understanding, and fast time-to-value of Large Language Models (LLMs) with the control and certainty of traditional (NLU-based) chatbots. With out-of-the-box conversation handling, CALM ensures user interactions remain coherent and natural. Rasa Studio adds an intuitive UI that's built from the ground up for CALM, saving significant development time and reducing costs by reducing the reliance on specialist teams.

“We believe Rasa delivers unparalleled value to its clients by automating or eliminating the most expensive and time-consuming aspects of delivering excellent customer service,” said Hunter Somerville, Partner at StepStone Group. “Rasa has proven time and again that security-conscious enterprise customers can safely deploy the latest conversational AI, with an elegant low-code platform that offers robust functionality, data privacy, and scale.”

PayPal Ventures joins this round as the venture firm’s first AI investment, marking the launch of its new AI Fund to invest in early stage AI startups across all industries and verticals. “We are thrilled to mark the launch of our AI Fund with our investment in Rasa,” said Alan Du, PayPal Ventures partner. “We believe Rasa offers a best-in-class platform for enterprises to develop robust, conversational AI, and we have seen how its concierge solutions improve customer engagement and business performance.”

Rasa powers two of the world’s three top banks, major insurers, and global travel and hospitality companies, among others. Rasa has been downloaded more than 50 million times by developers.

“Rasa’s latest platform marks a revolutionary advancement in the realm of conversational AI. It effortlessly combines ease of use with advanced capabilities and will enable us to securely leverage the potential of Large Language Models to create an even more intuitive conversational experience for our customers,” remarked Andreas Bohmann, VP IT Enterprise and Integration Architecture at Deutsche Telekom.

The new funding will also allow Rasa to continue growing its team, which is dedicated to reshaping the future of AI assistants. Rasa is currently hiring several exciting roles across North America and Europe in Marketing, Sales, Engineering, Customer Success, and more.

To see a list of all open roles, visit the Rasa Careers page today at: rasa.com/careers/

About Rasa

Rasa is a leader in generative conversational AI, enabling enterprises to build and deliver next-level AI assistants. Merging a state-of-the-art engine with a user-friendly low-code UI, Rasa offers an open and adaptable platform that perfectly aligns with business logic. This innovative approach makes Rasa a reliable and trusted choice for enterprises seeking to enhance customer interactions while reducing costs. Rasa is privately held with funding from StepStone, PayPal, Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Basis Set Ventures, and others. The company was founded in 2016 and is remote-first with a presence in San Francisco, Berlin, London, Paris and Belgrade.

About StepStone Group

StepStone Group Inc. (Nasdaq: STEP) is a global private markets investment firm focused on providing customized investment solutions and advisory, data and administrative services to its clients. As of September 30, 2023, StepStone was responsible for approximately $659 billion of total capital, including $146 billion of assets under management. StepStone's clients include some of the world's largest public and private defined benefit and defined contribution pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and insurance companies, as well as prominent endowments, foundations, family offices and private wealth clients, which include high-net-worth and mass affluent individuals. StepStone partners with its clients to develop and build private markets portfolios designed to meet their specific objectives across the private equity, infrastructure, private debt and real estate asset classes.

About PayPal Ventures

PayPal Ventures is the global corporate venture arm of PayPal. We invest for financial return in companies at the forefront of innovation in fintech, commerce enablement, digital infrastructure, and crypto/blockchain technologies. Through the expertise, experience, and vast network of PayPal Ventures – and the companies we invest in – we are helping to bring transformative solutions to market faster. For more information, please visit: www.paypal.vc.

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