Forethought, the Human-Centered AI Platform, today announced a $65 million Series C funding round that will fuel the company’s growth and accelerate the digital transformation in customer service with human-centered AI.
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“The pandemic pushed individuals and businesses alike to quickly move to digital channels and processes, a shift that many weren’t prepared for,” said Deon Nicholas, Co-Founder & CEO of Forethought. “We’re helping companies transform their customer experiences, and this funding round will allow us to rapidly expand our research, product development, and marketing to do just that.”
STEADFAST Capital Ventures led the investment and was joined by previous investors NEA, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, and K9 Ventures. New investors Collaborative Fund, Frontline Ventures, Cleo Capital, and Spearhead joined the round, as did A-list notable individual investors, including Gwyneth Paltrow, two-time NBA All-Star Baron Davis, Robert Downey Jr., Trevor McFedries, Kensho CEO Daniel Nadler, Dr. Christopher Manning, IronClad CEO Jason Boehmig, HumanFirst CEO Andy Coravos, Taylor Greene, and Adrienne Harris.
As part of the funding round, Karan Mehandru, Managing Director and Head of Venture Capital at STEADFAST Capital Ventures, will join Forethought’s Board of Directors.
“We believe there is a massive opportunity in the market to leverage the power of human-centered AI to automate a significant portion of the customer experience workflow as customer interactions race to being digital and online,” said Mehandru. “Forethought is the fastest-growing company in this emerging space with raving customers in every vertical, and their best-in-class team and technology are transforming the customer experience for some of the most important organizations of our time. We’re thrilled to be partners on this journey and couldn’t be more excited to be investing in Deon, Sami, and the Forethought team.”
This raise comes on the heels of a breakout year for the company where Forethought increased ARR by 5X, tripled its customer count, and now supports over 10 million human interactions annually on behalf of its customers. This highlights a critical need amongst customer service teams for better support technology that doesn’t sacrifice the customer experience, especially as companies scale.
“At Goop, our entire business revolves around the customer,” said Gwyneth Paltrow, renowned actress, author, and Goop CEO. “When I saw how Forethought’s AI can transform the customer experience, I knew there was something special here. Human-centered AI will change the world. I’m proud to be a Forethought investor and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.”
Companies report losing $75 billion every year due to poor customer service, and 96 percent of customer attrition is driven by poor customer service interactions. Forethought’s complete AI platform helps companies transform the customer experience across the entire support journey by offering AI that is human-centered, boosting agent efficiency while also improving the customer experience. Forethought empowers agents to self-serve, resolving common cases instantly with more than 90 percent accuracy; automatically tags and routes tickets to the right support team; and enables agents to solve complex tickets faster by providing relevant, AI-powered knowledge—all from one platform.
“The digital transformation sparked dramatic growth for our business,” said Henry Ward, CEO at Carta. “It also drastically increased our customer support ticket volume, and customer experience was one thing we couldn’t allow to slip. With Forethought, we’ve been able to cut response times for our customers by empowering our agents to support them more effectively.”
Forethought was named TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield winner at launch in 2018 and most recently was featured on Forbes’ “Next Billion-Dollar Startups” list and Forbes’ “AI 50 2021: Companies to Watch” list. Forethought provides their customer support AI platform to leading companies including Lime, Upwork, Thumbtack, Carta, Crunchbase, and many more.
About Forethought
Launched in 2018, Forethought is a leading AI company providing customer service solutions that transform the customer experience. Forethought’s products enable seamless customer experiences by infusing human-centered AI at each stage of the customer support journey: resolving common cases instantly, predicting and prioritizing tickets, and assisting agents with relevant knowledge — all from one platform.
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