Parloa tripled in value in 8 months to $3B with a raise of $350M

Berlin-based Parloa has raised $350 million in Series D funding from existing investors, valuing the six-year-old AI customer service startup at $3 billion. The round comes just eight months after the company raised $120 million at a $1 billion valuation.

The new round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from returning backers including EQT Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Durable Capital, and Mosaic Ventures.

Parloa is one of the startups developing AI agents that promise to automate the type of customer service previously handled by human representatives and help desk staff.

The company’s rivals include Sierra, co-founded by OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor, which raised $350 million in a valuation of $10 billion in September; and Decagon, reportedly in talks to raise capital at a price up from $4 billion. Other companies working to replace human agents with AI include old-timers Intercom and Kore.ai, as well as UK-based PolyAI, which raised an $86 million round in a worth $750 million last month.

Malte Kosub, co-founder and CEO of Parloa, doesn’t seem fazed by the competition, especially since he doesn’t believe it’s a “winner-takes-all” category. “Ultimately, this is one of the biggest opportunities ever in software,” he told TechCrunch.

Indeed, Parloa and its rivals are competing to automate a significant portion of the global customer support workforce, which Gartner estimates 17 million contact center agents worldwide.

But it’s not just the size of the market that gives Kosub confidence in Parloa’s ability to win. He pointed to the startup’s massive fundraising as a sign that it could become a top leader in the space. “There are a lot of companies out there, but you have to look at the scale and the amount of funding,” he said. “The number of competitors is greatly reduced.”

Last month, Parloa said that this generated annual recurring revenue from more than $50 millionbut that is not meaningfully ahead of Poly AI, which expected to end 2025 with an ARR of $40 millionor Decagon, which the news making “more” than $30 million in ARR. Still, Kosub seems confident that good capitalization will help his startup move forward.

AI agent Parloa has answered calls for large corporate customers, including Allianz, Booking.com, HealthEquity, SAP, Sedgwick, and Swiss Life, but the CEO says the goal is to do more than just build software that “picks up the phone.”

The company will invest a significant part of the new capital to build a “multi-model, contextual experience” that will allow a personalized AI agent to recognize the identity of the customer and their specific needs, whether they reach the app, website, or phone.