I'm surprised to see so much trivializing of the product and flaming of the entrepreneur.<p>Investors don't just give away $117M "because he's famous", and I seriously doubt their enterprise customers care that he's a singer. More likely he and the team have been making steady progress for years and are delivering real value. Kudos to them.
Here's a video of the product if you're as curious as I was. Siri/Alexa for enterprise users -- <a href="https://iamplus.com/enterprise/" rel="nofollow">https://iamplus.com/enterprise/</a><p>Seems like a smart market entry point. Enterprise employee virtual assistants are probably a wide open market today because Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Samsung focus on consumer AIs. Easy to envision a startup getting solid, near-term customer traction with a keyword-driven voice product.
> I.am+’s first enterprise customer is Deutsche Telekom AG (DTEGn.DE), the German telecommunications giant and parent company of T-Mobile. Since July, the company has been using Omega to power an AI customer support chatbot and it plans to add a voice phone system soon, i.am+ said.<p>Wow. I had no idea ChatBots needed $117 MILLION in funding to ship.<p>A quick search of GitHub shows several 100s of chatbots, even 1 with just 200 lines of code. <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agithub.com+chatbot" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agithub.com+chatbot</a><p>This has Juicero written all over it.
<a href="https://youtu.be/xGakbjwILKs" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/xGakbjwILKs</a>
who would give this guy $117 million?!
Here's a demo of it: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPKO36KJYxg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPKO36KJYxg</a>
Will.i.am's failures and eccentricity (for example <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prv5q84-Ebg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prv5q84-Ebg</a>) are far more well known than his successes. I'm surprised he was able to raise so much money.
I guess that's what you get for being buddy-buddy with Benioff...<p>There's a joke in there somewhere about how most telco customer service is indistinguishable from AI chatbots.
> <i>will.i.am has raised $117 million [...] as it announced its entry into the corporate computing market with a voice assistant for customer service.</i><p>Voice assisted AI startup from a pop star receives $100mm financing? Guys if this isn’t bubbly then I don’t know what is!<p>If you’re an IC, I hope you can take a little off the table while the gettin’ is good.