Encore AI, a startup founded in 2022 as Insait IO that trains and deploys AI voice and text agents by studying companies’ customer interactions, has raised $30 million in a Series A round led by Team8.
Product and how it works
The company’s platform ingests call recordings, emails and text messages, links that data to CRM systems, and segments customer interactions into stages. It then analyzes which parts of conversations contributed to successful outcomes and which did not — a process Encore calls "interaction mining." Using those insights, Encore builds AI agents that combine the most effective elements of the playbooks observed across an organization’s employees.
According to CEO Dvir Ginzburg, the agents can replicate effective behaviors seen in employees, including jokes, anecdotes or examples, because the models are trained directly from playbooks and dialogue fragments that demonstrated success. The agents can communicate with customers by voice or text and can also act as assistants to human staff, recommending responses and tactics during live conversations. The platform additionally helps companies find inefficiencies, friction points and gaps in their existing sales and customer support processes.
Customers and traction
Encore AI says it works with more than 40 enterprise customers globally, the majority of which are financial institutions. The company reports that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) has grown more than fivefold since its seed round less than 18 months ago, though it declined to disclose exact revenue figures or valuation.
Competition and strategic claims
While larger CRM vendors such as Salesforce, SAP, Zoho and HubSpot could build similar AI features using their customers’ data, Ginzburg argues that access to conversational data alone is insufficient. He says incumbents would need to redesign their implementation and technology stacks to make historical customer conversations the foundation of their agents in the same way Encore does.
Funding participants and plans for the money
The Series A was led by Team8 and included participation from Planven, Lukatz, Garage and several banks and insurers; Encore says some of the financial institutions invested after first using the product. The startup intends to use the proceeds to expand its U.S. sales operations and to deploy the platform with more large financial institutions.
Timeline and key facts
- Founded: 2022 (as Insait IO)
- Rebranded: Insait IO → Encore AI
- Series A: $30 million led by Team8
- Customers: 40+ enterprise customers, mostly financial firms
- ARR growth: more than 5x since the seed round (under 18 months)
Encore AI’s approach highlights the potential value of using historical customer conversations to train AI agents, and raises questions about how quickly established CRM providers can adapt their systems to leverage the same type of conversational data.
