Follow The Money: Meet The Investors Of Conversational AI · 7/15/2018 Follow The Money: Meet The Investors Of Conversational AI ... investors. venture capital firms, and angels profiled

7/15/2018 Follow The Money: Meet The Investors Of Conversational AI

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Follow The Money: Meet The Investors Of Conversational AIConversational commerce is exploding in chat, delivering what you want, when you want it. Get toknow the VCs and angels making it happen.

Posted on July 15, 2018, at 2:59 a.m.

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Boost VC / Via boost.vc

Hey Google, Alexa. Cortana, Siri and Messenger, 2018 is shaping up to be boom times.

As AI investment soars to historic highs, there's a renewed excitement among developers to create

more productive, intelligent voice and text interaction between humans and chatbots. Q1 2018 pulled

in $1.9 billion across 116 deals making it the biggest quarter ever, according to PwC's MoneyTree

report. This influx of money is fueling dramatic advances in predictive analytics and deep learning,

and accelerating the ability for algorithms to infer preferences from what we post across social media.

With over 5 billion people on the messaging apps, the market potential for conversational commerce

is massive.

Facebook, Amazon and Google, armed with our credit cards, calendars, location, and behavioral

data, are already able to order us Ubers, event tickets, outfits, restaurants and hotel rooms just by

asking a few questions in chat. It won't be long before bots are also able to match us with the perfect

mates, housing, and jobs.

"Ads are getting more relevant on these platforms. One day, upon being shown an ad on Instagram,

you'll be able to say I want it and the bot will confirm store, brand, item name, size, color, address, and

payment method - all through conversational UI. An ‘I want it’ from you and it ships. That will be a

watershed moment for Facebook and a huge revenue stream. It will help small businesses do

commerce better and will save users time from downloading apps or clicking around a website,” said

Kevin Raheja, Head of Strategic Partnerships at HubSpot.

For anyone who has shopped in a Shopify store powered by Octane AI, you may have experienced a

helpful chatbot reaching out in Messenger to help you complete your order. "70% of people abandon

their carts while shopping online," said Ben Parr, co-founder and CMO of Octane AI, "With our bots,

stores are increasing abandoned cart revenue by 250% which on average translates to an increase

of 7-25% in revenue per store,"

For those that get it right, there's a lot of money in conversational commerce.

"A Prime member spends $600 more annually that a non-Prime shopper, and Echo shoppers spend

another $400 more!" said Molly co-founder Chris Messina in his recent Medium post. The faster and

easier it is to order what we need, the more we spend.

In a much celebrated move this past April, Facebook introduced the Messenger Store to help users

find and engage with the more than 100,000 bots that's been developed for the platform. The store

offers editorial features and categories to browse, and can be found in the Discovery tab at the

bottom of messages. Although there are no charts yet to track top grossing apps, developers are

able to report their own stats, and some are doing very well like SnapTravel, a hotel booking bot,

which announced over $1 million of Messenger bookings at F8.

Although Messenger still doesn't have a dedicated fund or accelerator to support its developer

ecosystem, Amazon, Google and Microsoft do, and there are a growing number of corporate

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investors. venture capital firms, and angels profiled below who are placing bets on artificial

intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. With their collective efforts, we can

expect to soon see computer interaction that's friendlier, more efficient, and more human.

Meet The 40 Investors Rocking Chat

1. Adam Draper, Boost VC

Boost VC / Via boost.vc

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Adam Draper is the co-founder of Boost VC, a hybrid fund/accelerator that invests in 20 pre-seed

startups twice a year and offers a 3 month accelerator that includes housing and office space in

Silicon Valley. Portfolio consists of 200+ companies who have raised over $1 billion. Boost VC has

made several AI investments including Octane AI, a Messenger bot concierge for Shopify stores.

Octane AI co-founder Ben Parr described what it's like to work with Boost VC.

“Boost VC was our first investor. Adam and Brayton have had our back every step of the way, they’ve

introduced us to multiple customers and investors of later rounds, and have been a very positive

resource."

2. Adrian Fenty, M Ventures



Wikipedia / Via en.wikipedia.org

Adrian Fenty is the managing partner of M Ventures and the former Mayor of Washington D.C..The

fund has invested in a number of conversational AI startups including Octane AI, Drift and the AI

Foundation.

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3. Alex Ferrara, Bessemer Venture Partners

CNBC / Via cnbc.com

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Alex Ferrara is Bessemer's lead partner on Dashbot, a conversational analytics platform, On his team

is Jenny Gao who spoke recently at Dashbot's SuperBot 2018 conference on growing up with Alexa.

“What does a generation of Alexa-raised kids look like? People didn’t take to voice interfaces quickly,

but consider the evolution of human interaction with technology: Consumers are instantly

disappointed when they can’t zoom with their index finger and thumb. Next up, a voice-first world

can’t be far off."

4. Alex Mittal, FundersClub

Launch Incubator / Via launchincubator.co

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Alex Mittal is the co-founder of FundersClub, launched in 2012 as an online micro VC that makes pre-

seed investments. FundersClub portfolio companies have gone on to raise over $2 billion of follow

on capital from other leading venture capital firms and are valued at more than $7.6 billion. Portfolio

includes: Slack, Coinbase, Instacart, Le Tote, Flexport, and conversational AI startup Unbabel which

applies machine learning to translation to enable seamless, trusted cross-language communication.

5. Andrew Ng, AI Fund

Andrew Ng / Via aifund.ai

Andrew Ng is the co-founder of Coursera, former Head of Baidu AI, and mastermind behind Google

Brain's deep learning work. In January, Ng raised $175 million from NEA, Sequoia, Greylock and

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Softback to launch AI Fund, an accelerator focused on developing transformative AI applications for

manufacturing and enterprise.

6. Anne Patterson, Gradient Ventures

CNET / Via cnet.com

Anne Patterson is founder and managing partner of Google AI fund, Gradient Ventures, which is

seeking investments in startups focused on machine intelligence. Google Assistant Investments is

operated separately. Patterson is on the board of Square and is a Stanford alum.

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7. Ben Metcalfe, Ridge Ventures



Ben Metcalfe / Via linkedin.com

Ben Metcalfe is an investor at Ridge Ventures, co-founder of WP Engine, and former Uber, MySpace,

and BBCNews. Metcalfe works with Alex Rosen who led investment in MindMeld, a platform for

creating bots which was bought by Cisco last year.

Metcalfe shared with me his thoughts on the space, "I'm excited about the new interfaces and

platforms conversational AI is enabling - Alexa and Google in our homes are great examples today

but we're going to see rapid developments in automotive, industrial and healthcare applications

where startups will be able to create massive value. I would also add that founders are going to need

to tread carefully in the tightly controlled verticalized platforms like Alexa and Google Home, where

the vendor controls every level of the stack. I hope that commoditization of the technology and

greater competition will turn many of the walled gardens into open playgrounds where entrepreneurs

and investors alike can feel safer exploring."

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8. Bill Reichert, Fenox Venture Capital

tyinternety.cz / Via tyinternety.cz

Bill Reichert is a partner at Fenox Venture Capital who manages investments in the U.S. and heads

the firm's Startup World Cup. He is a Harvard and Stanford grad and founding board member of the

Churchill Club. Fenox invests in AI, robotics, big data, VR/AR, and fintech startups and is the lead

investor of x.ai, a virtual scheduling assistant.

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9. Brad Gillespie, IA Ventures



Brad Gillepsie / Via techstars.com

Brad Gillespie is a general partner of NYC-based IA Ventures, a TechStars mentor, and Microsoft

alum. He invests in conversational AI and his portfolio includes x.ai and DataRobot, an automated

machine learning platform for predictive modeling.

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10. Brad Hunstable, Angel



CNBC / Via cnbc.com

Brad Hunstable is co-founder of Ustream and an angel investor. His portfolio includes Octane AI and

Hickory, a YC15 startup that uses predictive analysis to understand when a sales rep will forget what

they learned and provide review exercises to prevent that from happening.

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11. Bruce Cleveland, Wildcat Ventures



Wildcat / Via wildcat.vc

Bruce Cleveland is a founding partner of Wildcat Ventures focused on AI, IoT and marketing

automation. He is former Apple, Oracle and Siebel, and interested in growing entrepreneurial hubs

outside of Silicon Valley including the Pacific Northwestl. Portfolio includes Amplero, a machine

learning digital intelligence platform that enables marketers to achieve what is not humanly possible.

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12. Christina Bechhold Russ, Samsung NEXT



Christina Bechhold Russ / Via linkedin.com

Christina Bechhold Russ is a principal at Samsung NEXT Ventues was the lead on Unbabel and is

based in London. Samsung NEXT invests in transformative early-stage software and services startups

based in Mountain View.

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13. Colin Beirne, Two Sigma Ventures



Colin Beirne / Via linkedin.com

Colin Berne is the founder and partner of Two Sigma Ventures, a Brooklyn-based early-stage venture

capital arm. Portfolio includes Anki, Amper Music, and Kasisto, a virtual assistant that manages

personal finances.

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14. Dharmesh Shaw, HubSpot Ventures Fund



Dharmesh Shah / Via Twitter: @dharmesh

Dharmesh Shaw is the founder of HubSpot, startup blogger and angel investor. HubSpot Ventures

Fund has completed a half dozen investments with AI/ML/NLP functionality. Both Dharmesh and

HubSpot Ventures Fund are investors in Drift.

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15. Dr. Huican Zhu, Amino Capital



Crunchbase / Via crunchbase.com

Dr. Huican Zhu is a founding partner of Amino Capital, pioneer of Google image search, and Stanford

professor. He is a recognized expert in computer vision image, facial and location detection. At Amino

Capital, he spearheads a $100 million fund and is seeking seed to growth stage data-driven

opportunities in autonomous driving, blockchain and conversational AI. Portfolio includes Ozlo which

was bought by Facebook to develop Messenger's conversational interfaces.

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16. Ilya Gelfenbeyn, Google Assistant Investments



Ilya Gelfenbeyn / Via angel.co

Next time you say, "Hey Google," think of this Palo Alto-based AI pioneer who came to Google in

2016 when his company Dialogflow fka API.AI was acquired to build engaging conversational voice

and text interfaces for the platform. Ilya Gelfenbeyn now heads up Google Assistant Investments and

is seeking early stage investment opportunities that advance the digital assistant ecosystem. The

fund was launched in May and provides money, resources, tools and promotional support for

developers, particularly those focused on gaming, travel and hospitality.

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17. Itxaso del Palacio, M12 Microsoft Ventures AI Fund

Microsoft / Via m12.vc

M12 is the venture capital arm of Microsoft, currently investing in technology companies (Series A and

beyond) based in San Francisco. The team has made a number of strategic investments in the

conversational AI space including Unbabel, AI powered human translations, Voiceeitt, speech

recognition, and Semantic which Microsoft just acquired to improve conversational interfaces (ahem

Cortana). Microsoft will be establishing a Conversational AI Center in Berkeley where Semantic is

based. Itxaso del Palacio is a partner based in London who led Unbabel for M12.

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18. Izhar Armony, CRV

CRV / Via crv.com

Izhar Armony is a partner at CRV who leads Drift, a conversational marketing platform. CRV fka

Charles River Ventures has backed nearly 400 companies including ClassPass, DoorDash, Dropbox,

Twitter, Zendesk, Hubspot, Yammer. Half of the companies CRV has backed have gone public.

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David Councel, CEO and co-founder of Drift, explains working with CRV, “There’s a reason why Izhar

and the CRV team have been the first investors in the last two companies I have started with

Performable and Drift. They have supported us since day one, and that commitment doesn’t wear off,"

19. John Borthwick, Betaworks

Pando / Via youtube.com

John Borthwick is the founder and CEO of Betaworks, a NYC-based startup studio that runs

accelerators, makes investments, offers a builders club with co-working space, and runs Botcamp

and Voicecamp accelerators focused on building conversational interfaces. The camps take stock of

participating startups and provides bot toolkits, mentorship on product, platform integration, data

science, branding, user acquisition, and fundraising, access to an early adopter open beta network

and AWS credits.Companies built by betaworks include Giphy, Dots, Tweetdeck and bitly,

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20. John Lilly, Greylock Partners



John Lilly / Via linkedin.com

John Lilly is a Greylock partner, board member for Code for America, and was Greylock's lead on

Tumblr, Instagram, Dropbox, AI Fund and Ozlo. Lilly is former Apple and a Stanford CS grad with a

focus on Human Computer Interaction. He is currently a Lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of

Business and advisor to both the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and StartX, Stanford’s start

up accelerator.

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21. John Frankel, ffVC



John Frankel / Via linkedin.com

John Frankel is the founder of ffVC, a NYC venture capital firm investing in seed and early stage AI,

cyber security, drones, and data analytics startups. Portfolio includes personal AI career guide Wade

& Wendy, conversational analytics platform, Dashbot, and successful startup brands Contently,

Indiegogo, Muse, Klout, and HowAboutWe.The firm also runs a 4 month incubator called AI NexusLab

at NYU.

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22. Julia Schottenstein, NEA



Julia Schottenstein / Via Twitter: @j_schottenstein

Julia Schottenstein is a Silicon Valley-based tech investor and Stanford computer science grad with a

concentration in AI and finance. NEA is focused on the future of trucking, transportation and AI with

investments in Mighty AI which delivers the human insights that artificial intelligence engines need to

see, hear, talk and think like humans, Drive.AI which is building the software brain of the self-driving

car, Pilot AI Labs computationally efficient deep-learning computer vision framework, and Andrew

Ng's AI Fund.

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23. Kate Mitchell, Scale Venture Partners



CNBC / Via youtube.com

Kate Mitchell is a co-founder of Scale Ventures which invests in transformative enterprise software

companies like Box, DocuSign, HubSpot, Omniture, PubNub, and conversational AI startups, TalkIQ

and Unbabel.

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24. Krishna K. Gupta, Romulus Capital



Romulus Capital / Via romuluscap.com

Krishna K. Gupta is the founder and general partner of Romulus Capital who founded the firm while at

MIT. Gupta's investments focus on emotional AI and include Cogito, Humanize and Ginger.io. Portfolio

also includes ClassPass, ZeroCater.

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25. Matt Garratt, Salesforce AI Innovation Fund

Web Summit / Via wecommer.com

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Matt Garratt is VP Managing Partner at Salesforce Ventures which late last year launched a $50

million fund for AI investment. Portfolio includes Unbabel, TalkIQ, Squiro and AllTurtles.

26. Nick Adams, AME Cloud Ventures

Jason Tusman / Via amecloudventures.com

Nick Adams heads up AI efforts at Yahoo founder Jerry Yang's AME Cloud Ventures. His portfolio

includes Cruise, CrowdAI, Zendrive, Zume Pizza, Bitpay, Tile and eero. Other AME funded companies

include Ripple and Osaro. AME had a successful exit with Ozlo last summer when it was acquired by

Facebook to build conversational AI experiences for Messenger.

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27. Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital



Sequoia Capital / Via sequoiacap.com

Pat Grady is the partner on Drift at Sequoia Capital and this is his manifesto:

"We work with the founders & management of emerging market leaders at various stages of

development. These individuals are incredibly intelligent, and extremely passionate about creating

products their customers love and their employees are psyched to build. It's inspiring and very

humbling. Many of our entrepreneurs are literally in the process of changing, at a very fundamental

level, the way business is conducted and life is lived. It's a tremendous privilege for us to accompany

them on that mission. Our role is to provide encouragement and support in the building of enduring

businesses that will withstand the test of time." Sequoia's portfolio includes Drift, [24]7.ai, 23andMe,

AdMob, Airbnb, App Annie, Apple, Atari, DoorDash, Good Eggs, Houzz, Humble Bundle, Instacart,

PayPal, Reddit, WhatsApp, Yahoo, Zappos, Whisper, YouTube, Weebly, Unity, Tumblr, Strava, Square,

PopSugar, PicsArt, LinkedIn, Instagram, HubSpot, Google, GitHub, EA, and Bird.

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28. Paul Bernard, Alexa Fund



Paul Bernard / Via techstars.com

Paul Bernard heads up Amazon's $200 million Alexa Fund to develop voice technology innovation on

the Alexa platform. He oversees the Alexa Accelerator which offers mentorship, resources, office

space, and a Techstars showcase for startups working on connected home, wearables, hearables,

enterprise, communications, connected car, health and wellness, and enabling technologies. To date

the fund has made 38 investments and has had 7 exits.

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29. Phil Libin, General Catalyst



Phil Libin / Via Twitter: @plibin

Phil Libin is a senior advisor to General Catalyst and co-founder of Evernote and AllTurtles, an AI

startup studio. Libin was the lead on Octane AI. The GC portfolio includes Snap, Airbnb, ClassPass,

HubSpot, Lemonade, Stripe, Giphy, Grammarly, Jet, Kayak, TuneIn, Venmo, Wag and Drift.

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30. Sam Lessin, Slow Ventures



The StartUp Kids / Via thestartupkids.com

Sam Lessin is a serial entrepreneur, investor, podcaster, Facebook alum, kitesurfer, and married to the

founder of The Information,. He is co-founder of Slow Ventures along with Dave Morin and Kevin

Colleran. Portfolio includes some of the most interesting startups in tech: AngelList, NexDoor,

Postmates, Everlane, Blue Bottle, Nest, Evernote, Postmates, Pinterest, Slack, Casper, Hipcamp,

PillPack, ClassPass, Wag, Giphy, Common, Tile, Brandless, allbirds, Dwell, and eero. Conversational AI

companies include virtual assistants Fin (which Lessin founded) and Assist.

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31. Saman Farid, Baidi Ventures AI Fund



Saman Farid / Via linkedin.com

Saman Farid leads the Baidu Ventures AI Fund which is a $500 million growth stage fund . AI is a

main focus of Beijing-based Baidu whose founder, Robin Li, has been quoted as saying, "Artificial

Intelligence is the ember that will eventually illuminate the path to a new future." Faird's personal

mission is to bring about artificially intelligent everything.

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32. Sandeep Sardana, BluePointe Ventures



Sandeep Sardana / Via angel.co

Sandeep Sardana is co-founder of BluePoint Ventures which is a Micro VC fund that invests in frontier

technologies accelerating the human experience with AI. BluePoint is currently participating in

Aavamo, a deep learning virtual assistant for enterprise that has raised $23.5 million in rounds led by

Intel Capital. ClassPass is also in its portfolio.

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33. Scott Friend, Bain Capital Ventures

Bain Capital Ventures / Via baincapitalventures.com



Scott Friend led the Berkeley-based Semantic Machines exit to Microsoft for BCV. Friend's areas of

investment are in disruptive new consumer products, retail related technologies, and data analytics.

His portfolio includes Jet.

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34. Shawn Carolan - Menlo Ventures

Shawn Carolan / Via Twitter: @shawnvc

Shawn is a partner at Menlo Ventures, and focuses on IT investments in the consumer sector. He was

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the lead investor in Siri, Roku, Uber, JUMP, IMVU, TeleNav, YuMe, and co-founded PlaySpan, a virtual

currency marketplace and payments platform acquired by Visa in 2011.

35. Steve Hall, Vulcan Capital



Vulcan Capital / Via capital.vulcan.com

Steve Hall is the managing director of Vulcan Capital, the multi-billion dollar investment arm of

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen. Portfolio includes Sun Basket, Redfin, ZoomInfo,

and Sionyx. Hall serves on the board of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

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36. Sumant Mandal, March Capital



Sumant Mandal / Via Twitter: @sumantmandal

Sumant Mandal is Managing Director at March Capital and invests in AI/ML, cloud, IoT and blockchain-

driven companies. Portfolio includes Palo Alto-based The Hive, an early stage incubator for data-

driven AI startups.

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37. Theresia Gouw, Aspect Ventures

Fortune / Via fortune.com

Theresia Gouw is co-founder of Aspect Ventures, former Accel, TED speaker, and Stanford and

Brown alum. Aspect Ventures invests in the emerging mobile marketplace from Seed to Series A.

Successes include HotelTonight, Birchbox, and Chime. In the mix is TalkIQ which applies AI, speech

recognition, and NLP technology to help businesses understand how to take action on price inquiries,

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objections, feature requests, and competitor mentions. Gouw is on the Forbes Midas List as one of

the top tech investors in the world.

38. Trevor Kienzle, Correlation Ventures

Trevor Kienzle / Via Twitter: @TrevorKienzle

Trevor Kienzle is a managing director of Correlation Ventures which fast tracks investment decisions

in just two weeks. Portfolio includes top consumer brands Casper, Dolls KIll, GoodEggs, 10% Happier,

and Sun Basket. Kienzle manages the Bay Area office and has an interest in intelligent bots.

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39. Varun Jain, Qualcomm Ventures

Qualcomm Ventures / Via qualcommventures.com

Varun is based in San Francisco and leads Qualcomm Ventures' global Early-Stage Fund, focused on

Seed and Series A opportunities. He was the lead on Cruise Automation (acquired by GM) and is an

AI enthusiast.

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40. Wendell Brooks, Intel Capital



Intel Capital / Via Twitter: @wenbrooks

Wendell Brooks is president of Intel Capital which invests in AI, IoT and cloud startups. It lead the

most recent round for Avaamo, a deep learning startup that builds conversational interfaces based on

neural networks to address problems in enterprises.

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CB Insights overview of AI M&A activity



CB Insights / Via cbinsights.com

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HubSpot's overview of the messaging apps



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Follow The Money: Meet The Investors Of Conversational AI · 7/15/2018 Follow The Money: Meet The Investors Of Conversational AI ... investors. venture capital firms, and angels profiled