Google Ventures-Backed Bounti Raises $16 Million for AI Teammate for Sales Teams

Bounti has come out of stealth and announced it raised $16 million in seed funding for its artificial intelligence (AI) teammate platform for sales, marketing and customer success teams.

The company’s platform is designed to perform repetitive, non-revenue generating work that would otherwise be done by these teams, allowing them to focus on customer relationships, Bounti said in a Thursday (Sept. 12) press release.

“At Bounti, we’re creating technology that empowers sales, marketing and customer success teams to focus on meaningful human work, and this investment shows that our vision is one that the industry believes in,” Matt Cooley, co-founder of Bounti, said in the release.

Bounti’s approach is to combine the capabilities of software with those of “real, trained humans” to accelerate companies’ revenue goals, Ashar Rizqi, co-founder of Bounti, said in the release.

“We will use our funding to invest aggressively in expanding capabilities across both the software platform and human-in-the-loop services component,” Rizqi said.

The company’s first AI teammate specializes in prospecting, according to the release. It researches companies, identifies buyers and generates personalized emails.

Because of Bounti’s belief that humans must be involved in the outreach, the AI teammate delivers this information to a company’s sales rep rather than simply automating the mass delivery of emails, the release said.

This approach saves time for the sales team, provides up-to-the-minute research and enables sales reps to get the conversations started more quickly, per the release.

Bounti’s seed round was led by Google Ventures, according to the release.

“We share Bounti’s vision that AI will transform knowledge work as we know it, and we’re excited to support the team as they bring real AI-driven value to go-to-market teams,” Sangeen Zeb, general partner at Google Ventures, said in the release.

While generative AI is expanding workers’ capabilities, experts warn that human oversight remains crucial to ensure quality and avoid pitfalls, PYMNTS reported Monday (Sept. 9).

Experts recommend a balanced approach to harness AI’s potential while mitigating risks.

At consumer and retail companies, 57% of marketing and sales teams are actively pursuing generative AI initiatives, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and AI-ID collaboration, “What Generative AI Has in Store for the Retail Industry.”