EMERGING TECH
EMERGING TECH
EMERGING TECH
Rulai raises $6.5M to help companies build multipurpose chatbots
Since chatbots hit Silicon Valley’s radar a few quarters ago, barely a week goes by without a funding announcement from a startup that’s involved in the trend.
On cue, Campbell, California-based Rulai entered the spotlight on Thursday with $6.5 million in fresh capital and a toolkit designed to ease the creation of virtual assistants. The platform provides a graphical workbench that the startup claims can make it easier to build a chatbot than competing alternatives. Instead of requiring users to manually program the behavior of their agent, Rulai offers visual customization features that don’t require any coding.
Adding a new function to a bot is a simple matter of filling a few data fields. To start, the user only needs to supply the question that they want their agent to ask and specify what data they should extract from replies. It can then be configured to either serve up a certain piece of information or carry out a task in response to the input.
The nuances of holding a conversation are handled automatically by Rulai’s platform. Bots created using the toolkit can lead a conversation or adopt a passive approach depending on the situation, memorize interactions for future reference and learn from each exchange with a user. The startup said these capabilities are powered by homegrown natural language processing technology developed under the leadership of founder Yi Zhang, a computer science professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Rulai will use today’s funding to spread the word about the platform. The investment was led by GSR Ventures, a Beijing-based venture capital firm with a multibillion-dollar portfolio that includes a stake in Didi Chuxing. Two other regional funds, Eight Roads Ventures China and Zhongwei Capital, contributed as well.
Their decision to back Rulai was no doubt influenced by the high-profile chatbot startup exits in the past few months. Most recently, a virtual assistant development startup called MindMeld Inc. was sold to Cisco Systems Inc. for $125 million. The deal followed similar acquisitions by Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and several other leading tech firms.
Image: Unsplash
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