 | |
| Industry | Enterprise Artificial Intelligence |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2015 in New York City |
| Founder | Richard Smullen |
| Website | pypestream |
Pypestream is an American software company that offers a self-service automation platform. [1] The company was founded in 2015 by Richard Smullen, the co-founder of Genesis Media LLC, [2] [3] [4] and is headquartered in New York City.
The Pypestream platform drives an engagement interface called a Pype that uses conversational AI within a graphical user interface. It gained popularity due to the high cost of assisted-service engagements versus the minuscule cost of self-service engagements, coupled with the brand-enhancing experience delivered by a Pype. [5] [6] It is used for customer service, employee service, recruiting, patient service, traveler service, marketing, and other automated engagement use cases. Pypestream couples AI-driven natural-language understanding (NLU) with a widget-based GUI that encourages pointing, swiping and gestures. [3] [7]
In late December 2015, Pypestream's mobile application launched in beta. [3] [7]
By April 2016, the company had 500 businesses signed up and using the messaging platform, including Washington Gas and Billboard. [3] [8] The same year, the company was named in the Red Herring list of 100 most exciting startups in North America [9] and announced a partnership with Discovery Health, the largest medical scheme administrator in South Africa, in order to include the Pypestream technology in the app for members of Discovery Health Medical Scheme. [10] In July 2016, Pypestream partnered with Insurance Thought Leadership to create a messaging platform specialized for insurance customer service. As of 2016, there were over 12,000 businesses using Pypestream since its launch in December 2015. [11]
In February, 2017, Pypestream raised $15 million in funding from Rick Braddock and The Chattergee Group. [12]
In 2018, Pypestream was named one of the four Hot Vendors in Conversational AI by Aragon Research. [13] Its current clients include Allianz, EY, Google, Sling, Brown & Brown, and Shell. [14] [1] [15] The company has been granted five patents by the U.S. Patent Office [16] and secured $15 million in funding by W.R. Berkley, bringing their total up to $35 million. [1] [17]