Virtual Support Tool Developer Espressive Announces Series B Funding Round; Pat Calhoun Quoted

Espressive, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based artificial intelligence software developer, has raised $30M in a round of Series B financing led by Insight Partners and supported by Wing Venture Capital and General Catalyst.

Espressive said Wednesday it will use the investment to advance growth initiatives and product innovation and address its client base’s demands.

The company’s Barista virtual support agent uses AI and natural language processing to automate response to help desk concerns and employee requests and questions while delivering personalized experiences.

"We've received overwhelmingly positive feedback from our customers and prospects about Barista,” said Pat Calhoun, CEO and founder of Espressive. “To address this demand and accelerate expansion into new markets and use cases, we will use this funding to further scale our engineering, sales, and marketing teams as well as continue to cultivate our partner program.”

Jeff Horing, co-founder and managing director at Insight Partners, will join Espressive as a board member as part of the investment.

Science Applications International Corp. and Espressive signed an agreement in July of last year to integrate SAIC’s U-Centric self-service help desk platform with the latter’s Barista tool.