NEW YORK and TEL AVIV, Israel, Oct. 26, 2020 /CNW/ — TechSee, the category leader in Intelligent Visual Assistance, today announced it has raised $30 million in a Series C equity investment round. The round was co-led by OurCrowd, Salesforce Ventures, and TELUS Ventures with participation from Scale Venture Partners and Planven Entrepreneur Ventures.
Founded in 2015, the Tel Aviv-based company has grown rapidly by reducing customer friction points for enterprises. Its Visual Assistance technology bridges the visual gap in customer service, allowing customers and technicians to receive real-time AR guidance on their smartphone or tablet screens in assisted service or self-service mode. The company is also innovating in the field of Computer Vision AI with technology that can provide visual guidance to users installing, operating, or troubleshooting networking devices, smart home products, home appliances, and more. TechSee’s AI platform can automatically identify components, ports, cables, LED indicators, and more to detect issues and suggest resolutions for consumers, contact center agents, and field technicians.
“There has been a significant increase in demand for contactless customer service technologies propelled by COVID-19 social distancing requirements and the acceleration of digital transformation projects,” said Eitan Cohen, CEO of TechSee. “Our Visual Automation technology is at the heart of it, and now that momentum is growing exponentially as businesses seek to reduce costs and optimize customer experience strategies in the current environment. Our vision is to get rid of the user manual and replace it with dynamic AR assistants.”
TechSee’s solutions have become critical during the COVID-19 pandemic as enterprises seek ways to resolve customers’ issues without jeopardizing health and safety; dispatching field service technicians or allowing them to enter people’s homes is, in many cases, no longer viable. Even when in-person visits are feasible, businesses are actively seeking ways to reduce truck rolls in favor of remote resolutions that are more cost effective and efficient. TechSee recently announced a commercial partnership with Verizon to address this issue by bringing visual assistance to customers.
Additional commercial partnerships include Vodafone, Orange, Liberty Global, Accenture, Hitachi, and Lavazza, among others.
“Remote Visual Assistance is becoming an imperative technology for any customer-centric enterprise operating at scale,” said Alex Kayyal, Partner & Head of International, Salesforce Ventures. “The potential upside for the business and the customer is difficult to ignore. This industry has fundamentally shifted, and we’re excited by the innovation TechSee is bringing to the market in the area of customer assistance.”
TechSee addresses many of the issues that have historically plagued contact centers and field service operations. Its technology reduces customer effort, cuts costly truck rolls and product returns, improves the productivity and efficiency of support agents and technicians, and decreases call volume by enhancing self-service, in some cases saving companies hundreds of thousands of dollars per month while improving customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
“We couldn’t be more delighted with the progress TechSee has made since OurCrowd initially provided seed funding in 2017,” said OurCrowd CEO, Jon Medved. “While this company has already come a long way, we know the best is yet to come.”
The capital injection will be used to enter new markets and verticals while expanding TechSee’s product offerings and capabilities.
“Innovators like TechSee are revolutionizing the customer journey to deliver real value and meaningful improvement through digital transformation,” said Rich Osborn, managing partner, TELUS Ventures. “Our investments in market-leaders like TechSee aim to support the development of secure, innovative technologies to improve the customer experience which perfectly aligns with our corporate philosophy to put Customers First. We look forward to helping enable these future innovations.”
TechSee revolutionizes the customer experience domain with the first visual engagement solution powered by Computer Vision AI and Augmented Reality. It enables enterprises around the world to deliver better customer assistance, enhance service quality and reduce costs. TechSee is led by industry veterans with years of experience in mobile technologies, artificial intelligence and big data. The company is headquartered in Tel Aviv with offices in New York, London, and Madrid. For more information, visit www.techsee.me.
About Salesforce Ventures
Salesforce is the global leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), bringing companies closer to their customers in the digital age. Salesforce Ventures, the global investment arm of Salesforce, invests in the next generation of enterprise technology that extends the power of the Salesforce Platform. Salesforce Ventures is building the world’s largest ecosystem of enterprise cloud companies and extending that technology to customers. Portfolio companies receive funding, strategic advisory and operating support, and can easily joinPledge 1% to make giving back part of their business model. Salesforce Ventures has invested in more than 375 companies, including DocuSign, GoCardless, Guild Education, nCino, Snowflake, Twilio, Zoom and others across 22 countries since 2009. For more information, please visit www.salesforce.com/ventures.
About OurCrowd
OurCrowd is a global venture investment platform that empowers institutions and individuals to invest and engage in emerging companies. The most active venture investor in Israel, OurCrowd vets and selects companies, invests its capital, and provides its global network with unparalleled access to co-invest and contribute connections, talent and deal flow. OurCrowd builds value for its portfolio companies throughout their lifecycles, providing mentorship, recruiting industry advisors, navigating follow-on rounds and creating growth opportunities through its network of multinational partnerships. With $1.5 billion of committed funding, and investments in 220 portfolio companies and 22 venture funds, OurCrowd offers access to its membership of 55,000 individual accredited and institutional investors, family offices, and venture capital partners from over 183 countries to invest alongside, at the same terms. OurCrowd’s portfolio is diversified across sectors and stages, ranging from seed and series A through late stage and pre-IPO firms. Since its founding in 2013, OurCrowd portfolio companies have been acquired by some of the most prestigious brands in the world, including Microsoft, Uber, Canon, Oracle, Nike, and Intel. To register and get involved, visit www.ourcrowd.com.
About TELUS Ventures
As the strategic investment arm of TELUS Corporation (TSX: T, NYSE: TU), TELUS Ventures was founded in 2001 and is one of Canada’s most active corporate venture capital funds. TELUS Ventures has invested in over 70 companies since inception with a focus on innovative technologies such as Health Tech, IoT, AI and Security. TELUS Ventures is an active investment partner and supports its portfolio companies through mentoring; exposure to TELUS’ extensive network of business and co-investment partners; access to TELUS’ technologies and broadband networks; and by actively driving new solutions across the TELUS ecosystem. For more information please visit: ventures.TELUS.com.
About Scale Venture Partners
Scale is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital investment firm with $1.3B under management. We were early investors in SaaS pioneers like Bill.com, Box, DocuSign, HubSpot, JFrog, and RingCentral. Today we’re investing in the next generation of great enterprise software companies like WalkMe, CircleCI, KeepTruckin, BigID, and Lever. Learn more at www.scalevp.com.
About Planven Entrepreneur Ventures
Planven Entrepreneur Ventures (“PEV”) is a venture capital fund that invests globally in advanced technology solutions for fast growing B2B markets leveraging on a unique corporate network in Europe and a strong presence in Israel. PEV invests in series A (late), B and C in revenue generating companies. Target sectors are artificial intelligence, big data, cybersecurity and health tech. PEV supports the company in the expansion phase in Europe and in the US. For more information, visit www.planvenev.com.
SOURCE TechSee
For further information: Contact for media only: Liad Churchill , +972547782536
NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Tesla soared Wednesday as investors bet that the electric vehicle maker and its CEO Elon Musk will benefit from Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Tesla stands to make significant gains under a Trump administration with the threat of diminished subsidies for alternative energy and electric vehicles doing the most harm to smaller competitors. Trump’s plans for extensive tariffs on Chinese imports make it less likely that Chinese EVs will be sold in bulk in the U.S. anytime soon.
“Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, in a note to investors. “This dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players.”
Tesla shares jumped 14.8% Wednesday while shares of rival electric vehicle makers tumbled. Nio, based in Shanghai, fell 5.3%. Shares of electric truck maker Rivian dropped 8.3% and Lucid Group fell 5.3%.
Tesla dominates sales of electric vehicles in the U.S, with 48.9% in market share through the middle of 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Subsidies for clean energy are part of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. It included tax credits for manufacturing, along with tax credits for consumers of electric vehicles.
Musk was one of Trump’s biggest donors, spending at least $119 million mobilizing Trump’s supporters to back the Republican nominee. He also pledged to give away $1 million a day to voters signing a petition for his political action committee.
In some ways, it has been a rocky year for Tesla, with sales and profit declining through the first half of the year. Profit did rise 17.3% in the third quarter.
The U.S. opened an investigation into the company’s “Full Self-Driving” system after reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian. The investigation covers roughly 2.4 million Teslas from the 2016 through 2024 model years.
And investors sent company shares tumbling last month after Tesla unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi at a Hollywood studio Thursday night, seeing not much progress at Tesla on autonomous vehicles while other companies have been making notable progress.
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 100 points in late-morning trading, helped by strength in base metal and utility stocks, while U.S. stock markets were mixed.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 103.40 points at 24,542.48.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 192.31 points at 42,932.73. The S&P 500 index was up 7.14 points at 5,822.40, while the Nasdaq composite was down 9.03 points at 18,306.56.
The Canadian dollar traded for 72.61 cents US compared with 72.44 cents US on Tuesday.
The November crude oil contract was down 71 cents at US$69.87 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down eight cents at US$2.42 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$7.20 at US$2,686.10 an ounce and the December copper contract was up a penny at US$4.35 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 200 points in late-morning trading, while U.S. stock markets were also headed higher.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 205.86 points at 24,508.12.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 336.62 points at 42,790.74. The S&P 500 index was up 34.19 points at 5,814.24, while the Nasdaq composite was up 60.27 points at 18.342.32.
The Canadian dollar traded for 72.61 cents US compared with 72.71 cents US on Thursday.
The November crude oil contract was down 15 cents at US$75.70 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down two cents at US$2.65 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was down US$29.60 at US$2,668.90 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents at US$4.47 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 11, 2024.
