Intelligent automation startup Charli AI announces the limited release of its chat-oriented and no-code workflow driven solution for the fast-growing digital workplace market. No longer do businesses need to toil over burdensome tasks like invoicing, time and expense tracking. The company is releasing early access to integration partners today and will be announcing its full list of integration partners and market wide release within 6 months.
The company raised their $1.6 million seed round from Yaletown Partners and BDC Capital in the Spring of 2019 and has been making significant product advancements since. The investors understand the acute productivity problems facing many businesses, startups, and knowledge workers – they spend too much time on everyday tasks that could be automated Hrtech.
Charli is the latest venture from the team behind Bit Stew Systems, an Industrial IoT startup that exited to GE Digital in 2016 for $208 million. Kevin Collins and Alex Clark have worked together building companies for the last 20 years; as founders trying to grow their businesses, they felt the strain of administrative tasks daily but knew they could solve the problem with technology.
“I wish I had technology like Charli ten years ago when Alex and I were starting Bit Stew, we could have accelerated our product development and grown the business much faster,” said Collins, CEO, Charli AI. “But the maturity of AI was not there yet.” The acute understanding of the problem, a rise in the number of connected workers, and the maturity of AI made it the right time for a product like Charli.
“The problem with many workflow tools today is that training data is hard coded and rigid, we were aware of these problems and knew this would slow our time to market, we were able to develop a novel approach to training data that puts Charli’s AI capabilities in an entirely new category,” said Collins.
Charli makes it easy to automate some of the most critical components of running a business, workflows like, invoicing, work orders, following up with customers, time keeping, scheduling and routing. Automation can help but most traditional automation solutions are expensive, cumbersome or too brittle for the rapidly evolving digital workplace. “Time is money and even though I can relatively quickly code automation routines for myself, wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t even have to do that?” said Clark, CTO, Charli AI. “Well that’s the idea behind Charli, intelligent automation to run business – no coding required. Save time and money to do the really important work.”
“We invested in Charli for three reasons, the strength of this team, their novel approach to the technology, and because this is a massive problem that needs solving,” said Salil Munjal, Managing Partner, Yaletown Partners. “I know this team can solve this challenge and build a transformative product just as they did with Bit Stew Systems three years ago.”