The artificial intelligence sector has been buzzing in 2023, with one local company leading the market space and spurring investment in North Texas.
Fort Worth-based SmartAction has been in the business of AI and automation for more than a decade. Now, it is one of the leaders in AI-powered virtual agent solutions (bots) for voice and text chat, according to the Fort Worth Report.
The company’s voice-and-text assisted AI technology is used by several big-name companies, including the American Automobile Association (AAA) and Columbus, Ohio-based shoe company Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW). Both companies use SmartAction’s automated technology to assist customers and support their specific needs.
According to SmartAction CEO Kyle Johnson, the surge in AI technologies in 2023 and robust interest by investors assisted with fundraising, according to FWR.
So far, the automation company has attracted interest from two major private equity firms: San Diego, California-based TVC Capital and Wellesley, Massachusetts-based Staley Capital.
“They looked at what we have going on now, and this resurgence of AI as a pretty important thing in the market right now as a great opportunity to double down on their initial investment,” Johnson said, per FWR. “And so I think that’s fairly significant.”
During the company’s latest funding round in May, SmartAction raised $38 million to grow its AI platform.
Still, there has been some hesitancy surrounding AI, with many pioneers in the field calling on governments to exercise greater regulation and oversight, as covered by The Dallas Express.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law back in May, “My worst fears are that we [the tech industry] cause significant harm to the world … If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong.”
More broadly, many believe that AI will eventually replace human labor and put people out of work. Yet Johnson sees AI technology as a means to transition people into more complex roles instead of dull and uninspired day-to-day tasks.
“If you’re a phone rep, an inbound sales or service agent, there’s parts of your job that you don’t enjoy, just because they’re boring, they’re mundane, they’re repetitive and routine,” Johnson said, according to FWR. “Those are the types of things that we could employ a platform like SmartAction to do.”
The automation seen in SmartAction’s technology has pretty much become an industry standard, explained Bill Ratliff, vice president of operations at Priceline Partner Solutions, an online travel agency.
If a company wants to optimize its business processes, use fewer resources, and save money, it will choose to incorporate AI, Ratliff told FWR. SmartAction’s technology can deflect up to 15,000 calls a month that otherwise would have been answered by the company’s agents, he claimed.
