Two-second answer AI chatbot start-up Brainfish lands $3.85m

A Sydney AI-powered chatbot firm that has a contract with gig-economy platform Airtasker has raised $3.85m.

Brainfish CTO Ajain Vivek Thankaswamy, left, and CEO Daniel Kimber.

A start-up behind an AI-powered chatbot that can answer queries in less than two seconds has raised $3.85m.

The platform has picked up a lot of interest from investors and customers, managing to nab contracts with Aussie gig-economy platform Airtasker and pet-minding platform Mad Paws.

Daniel Kimber, the chief executive and co-founder of Brainfish, said the new funds would be used to expand the business and enter other markets. “The market has responded incredibly well to our product in its first year, and we’re firmly focused on growth to continue redefining the customer support landscape,” he said.

Brainfish operates in the US, Singapore and Australia.

The platform has seen about 65 per cent month-on-month growth, with about 300,000 users globally, Mr Kimber said.

“Customer support hasn’t changed in decades, and while tooling is better, people today want quick answers that are accurate and contextualised,” Mr Kimber said.

Brainfish would “continue pushing the boundaries of customer support” as “bad bot answers just won’t suffice anymore”.

The platform is able to combine a company’s data with what it knows about a customer in order to give personalised ­answers.

Autism support

Meanwhile a Melbourne-based start-up which specialises in support for parents with autistic children has raised $750,000.

The start-up, Kite Therapy, co-founded by Rachelle Dunstan, Matthew Morrison and Gregor Whyte, has raised capital to hire more therapists and specialists who can assist with development delays due to autism.

About 70 per cent of new entrants in the NDIS involved developmental delay and autism, Ms Dunstan said. About one in 40 individuals are on the autism spectrum, according to Kite Therapy, which had developed specific programs for children aged one to six, catering to different areas of development including communication, social skills, motor skills and behaviours.

Ms Dunstan came up with the idea for Kite Therapy while working at disability support marketplace Hireup. She said there was a shortage of allied health therapists for intensive therapy.

“In regional Australia, there are often no services at all, and it’s common for families to spend years on waitlists to access support and miss their children’s critical windows of development. Access to quality holistic and timely therapy ensures a child can flourish to the best of their potential,” she said.

“Because of high costs or where they lived, families could not support their children’s ­development.

“So we have developed a model that democratises access to therapy.”