With leading tech giants like Alphabet, Apple, and Amazon focusing more on artificial intelligence (AI), the sector is attracting much funding. According to CB Insights, over 550 startups using AI as a core part of their products raised $5B in funding in 2016. Afiniti is one such startup that has become a Billion Dollar Unicorn.

Afiniti’s Journey

Washington, D.C.-based Afiniti was founded in 2009 by Zia Chishti. It was originally called SATMAP and was renamed as Afniti International Holdings Ltd. in 2016. Zia was previously the founding CEO of Align Technology, a teeth-straightening device company, which is now valued at almost $10 billion.

Afiniti uses AI to efficiently match sales agents to answer each individual caller based on data such as purchase history, income, and demographic data from about 100 databases. The databases include census archives, credit firm Experian, data companies Acxiom, Targus, and Allant, and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These insights are then matched with that of the sales agent who has been successful in closing deals with customers having a similar profile. The company claims that such matching results in more satisfied customers and increase of 4% to 6% in sales. For its service, Afiniti charges a fee that’s competitive with a customer’s alternative cost of acquisition.

Initially, Afiniti targeted large telecom and insurance companies that have sizable call centers, but has now expanded its focus to medical organizations and banks. It claims to have dozens of clients who have installed its software in more than 150 call centers.

Afiniti has about 700 employees, of which 500 are engineers. Over 300 engineers work on client interfacing and the rest of the AI engineers are split between business analytics and machine learning. Its competitors include IBM’s Watson and MatterSight. Chicago-based Mattersight matches agents with customers based on a caller’s personality, which is determined based on prior customer-service calls.

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