Afiniti

Last updated
Afiniti
Company type Private
Industry Software development
Genre Artificial intelligence
Founded2005 in Washington, D.C., United States
Founders Zia Chishti
HeadquartersHamilton,
Bermuda
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Hassan Afzal CEO
Thomas Inskip President [1]
Number of employees
2,100 [2]  (2021)
Website afiniti.com

Afiniti Ltd., also called Afiniti, [3] is an American multinational data and software company. Founded in 2005, Afiniti is focused on developing artificial intelligence for use in customer call centers. [2] Afiniti is a unicorn company with a valuation of $1.6 billion in 2017. [2] [4]

Contents

History

2006–2016

In 2006, Afiniti was founded in Washington, D.C. by Zia Chishti, a former Morgan Stanley investment banker who had previously co-founded Align Technology, with the help of his partners at The Resource Group (TRG), Hasnain Aslam and Mohammed Khaishgi of the Kheshgi family. [2] [5] In 2008, the company submitted several patents related to matching caller data with computer models, which were granted in 2014. [6] In late 2016, the company confidentially filed for a potential future initial public offering (IPO). [4] [7] [8] Around that time, Afiniti also introduced software to run phone numbers "through a variety of databases prior to when a call center agent picks up the phone." The system referred to around 100 databases to gather information on callers, including from public profiles such as Twitter. According to Fortune magazine, the system operated on "the idea that it's possible, using thousands of call records, to determine which agents perform best with certain type of customers." [9]

2017–2018

According to The Wall Street Journal , by January 2017, the company had installed its artificial intelligence software in around 150 call centers for several dozen companies, [3] among them Caesars Entertainment Corporation and Sprint. [9] In 2017, the company closed a fourth round of venture funding, [4] bringing in $80 million [4] from investors such as GAM, McKinsey & Co, Elisabeth Murdoch, and John Browne. The round brought the company's total funding raised since its inception to $100 million. [4] [10] Afiniti signed a deal with Huawei in September 2017 [11] and Avaya in April 2018. [12]

In January 2018, Fortune magazine included Afiniti on its list of the 100 companies "leading the way in A.I." [13] By June 2018, Afiniti had been active in 18 countries and had 1,000 employees. [2] [8]

2021

In November 2021, Zia Chishti stepped down as chairman, chief executive officer and director following allegations of sexual assault to an employee made in testimony to the United States House Committee on the Judiciary. [14] The former UK prime minister David Cameron left his role as chair of Afiniti's advisory board following the allegations. [15]

Services and technology

According to the company, its software uses AI to boost company's efficiency by "predicting interpersonal behavior" [10] between the callers and agents. [2] VentureBeat explains that "when a customer calls into a call center, Afiniti matches their phone number — either landline or cellphone — with any information tied to it from up to 100 databases. These databases carry purchase history, income, and other demographic information." [4] [3] Data on customers is collected from the customers and from data brokers. Afiniti does not charge for the software or service itself, but instead takes a percentage of any proven revenue increases resulting from use of the software. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avaya</span> American technology company

Avaya LLC, often shortened to Avaya and formerly Avaya Inc., is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey, that provides cloud communications and workstream collaboration services. The company's platform includes unified communications and contact center services. In 2019, the company provided services to 220,000 customer locations in 190 countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mitel</span> Canadian telecommunications company

Mitel Networks Corporation is a Canadian telecommunications company. The company previously produced TDM PBX systems and applications, but after a change in ownership in 2001, now focuses almost entirely on Voice-over-IP (VoIP), unified communications, collaboration and contact center products. Mitel is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with offices, partners and resellers worldwide.

Vonage is an American cloud communications provider operating as a subsidiary of Ericsson. Headquartered in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, the organization was founded in 1998 as Min-X as a provider of residential telecommunications services based on voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). In 2001, the organization changed its name to Vonage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avast</span> Czech security software company

Avast Software s.r.o. is a Czech multinational cybersecurity software company headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic, that researches and develops computer security software, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Avast has more than 435 million monthly active users and the second largest market share among anti-malware application vendors worldwide as of April 2020. The company has approximately 1,700 employees across its 25 offices worldwide. In July 2021, NortonLifeLock, an American cybersecurity company, announced that it was in talks to merge with Avast Software. In August 2021, Avast's board of directors agreed to an offer of US$8 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salesforce</span> American software company

Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, and application development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Workday, Inc.</span> American software company

Workday, Inc., is an American on‑demand (cloud-based) financial management, human capital management, and student information system software vendor. Workday was founded by David Duffield, founder and former CEO of ERP company PeopleSoft, along with former PeopleSoft chief strategist Aneel Bhusri, following Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft in 2005.

RingCentral, Inc. is an American provider of cloud-based communication and collaboration products and services.

HubSpot, Inc. is an American developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qualtrics</span> Experience management company

Qualtrics is an American experience management company, with co-headquarters in Seattle, Washington, and Provo, Utah, in the United States. The company was founded in 2002 by Scott M. Smith, Ryan Smith, Jared Smith, and Stuart Orgill.

Veracode is an application security company based in Burlington, Massachusetts. Founded in 2006, it provides SaaS application security that integrates application analysis into development pipelines.

Palantir Technologies Inc. is a public American company that specializes in software platforms for big data analytics. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, it was founded by Peter Thiel, Nathan Gettings, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Alex Karp in 2003. The company's name is derived from The Lord of the Rings where the magical palantíri were "seeing-stones," described as indestructible balls of crystal used for communication and to see events in other parts of the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Databricks</span> American software company

Databricks, Inc. is a global data, analytics and artificial intelligence company founded by the original creators of Apache Spark.

Sprinklr is an American software company based in New York City that develops a SaaS customer experience management (CXM) platform. The company's software, also called Sprinklr, combines different applications for social media marketing, social advertising, content management, collaboration, employee advocacy, customer care, social media research, and social media monitoring.

Snowflake Inc. is an American cloud computing–based data cloud company based in Bozeman, Montana. It was founded in July 2012 and was publicly launched in October 2014 after two years in stealth mode.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Braze, Inc.</span> American software company

Braze, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company based in New York City It is a customer engagement platform used by businesses for multichannel marketing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UiPath</span> Romanian-American developer of robotic process automation software

UiPath Inc. is a global software company that makes robotic process automation (RPA) software. It was founded in Bucharest, Romania, by Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă. Its headquarters are in New York City. The company's software monitors user activity to automate repetitive front and back office tasks, including those performed using other business software such as customer relationship management or enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

Kinaxis is a supply chain management and sales and operation planning software company based in the Kanata district of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and is a S&P/TSX Composite Component.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SenseTime</span> Hong Kong software company

SenseTime (商汤科技) is a partly state-owned publicly traded artificial intelligence company headquartered in Hong Kong. The company develops technologies including facial recognition, image recognition, object detection, optical character recognition, medical image analysis, video analysis, autonomous driving, and remote sensing. Since 2019, SenseTime has been repeatedly sanctioned by the U.S. government due to allegations that its facial recognition technology has been deployed in the surveillance and internment of the Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities. SenseTime denies the allegations.

Muhammad Ziaullah Khan Chishti is a Pakistani-American investor and business executive. He is the founder of Afiniti and TRG Global.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hippo (company)</span> American property insurance company

Hippo is an American property insurance company based in Palo Alto, California. Hippo offers homeowner's insurance that covers the homes and possessions of the insurance holder as well as liability from accidents happening in the insured property. They use AI and big data to aggregate and analyze property information. The company sells insurance policies directly to customers and through independent insurance brokers.

References

  1. ↑ "Management". Afiniti. Retrieved November 28, 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Medici, Andy (June 11, 2018). "Meet D.C.'s little-known artificial intelligence firm — and its plans to go public". Washington Business Journal . Retrieved November 21, 2021.(subscription required)
  3. 1 2 3 Knutston, Ryan (January 10, 2017). "Many Call Centers Know a Surprising Amount About You". The Wall Street Journal . ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved November 21, 2021.(subscription required)
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Marshall, Matt (April 14, 2017). "Sales AI company Afiniti valued at $1.6 billion, files for IPO". VentureBeat . Retrieved November 21, 2021.
  5. ↑ Memon, Bilal (December 7, 2017). "Born in the US, raised in Pakistan: Man who founded two billion-dollar companies". The Express Tribune . Retrieved November 21, 2021.
  6. ↑ "History". Afiniti. Archived from the original on December 11, 2018. Retrieved December 10, 2018.
  7. ↑ Turner, Giles; Baigorri, Manuel (January 2014). "AI Firm Afiniti Said to Weigh IPO at About $2 Billion Value". Bloomberg News . Retrieved November 21, 2021.(subscription required)
  8. 1 2 Hooper, Troy (January 12, 2018). "Top 30 Tech Exits To Watch In 2018". Forbes . Retrieved November 21, 2021.
  9. 1 2 Roberts, Jeff John (January 10, 2017). "How Companies Use Your Social Media Data When Taking Your Call". Fortune magazine . Retrieved November 21, 2021.(subscription required)
  10. 1 2 "This company founded by a Pakistani is valued at $1.6 billion". The Express Tribune . Karachi. April 16, 2017. Retrieved November 21, 2021.
  11. ↑ Faseeh Mangi (October 2, 2017). "Tycoon Takes Investors Heli Skiing to Show Them Pakistan's Safe". Bloomberg News. Retrieved November 21, 2021.(subscription required)
  12. ↑ "Avaya and Afiniti Partner to Bring Unique and Proven, AI-Driven Behavioral Pairing to the Contact Center". Avaya. April 24, 2018. Retrieved November 21, 2021.
  13. ↑ Rapp, Nicolas; O'Keef, Brian (January 8, 2018). "These 100 Companies Are Leading the Way in A.I." Fortune magazine. Retrieved November 21, 2021.
  14. ↑ "Afiniti founder Zia Chishti 'steps down' after sexual assault allegations". Dawn . Karachi. November 19, 2021. Retrieved November 21, 2021.
  15. ↑ Neate, Rupert (November 17, 2021). "David Cameron quits Afiniti role after founder accused of sexual assault". The Guardian . London. Retrieved November 21, 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.