Scale is thrilled to announce our Series A investment in Bland. The company is a leader in productizing the latest research in voice AI and applying the technology so their customers can independently and flexibly automate their calling operations.
Human-to-human voice is the most used channel for customer interaction and the one most consumers prefer, even in the face of rigid last-generation IVR and widespread efforts to divert them away from this expensive-to-operate channel to alternatives like chat.
Bland’s LLM-based AI phone agents enable enterprises to offer the sort of flexible voice interaction at-the-moment-of-demand that their consumers seek, and with software-enabled cost-structures and scalability.
In its focus on automating voice-based customer interactions, Bland is, of course, in good company. Our portfolio company Observe is a leading automation partner to enterprise contact centers, and a handful of startups have emerged offering Voice AI developer services. Bland’s differentiation comes through:
- a unique end-user facing Zapier-style flow builder, called Pathways
- an edge in call speed, won through unique investment in proprietary infrastructure
Through Bland’s Zapier-style workflow builder, Pathways, a non-technical user (like an operations specialist, an HR leader, or a support leader) can build robust custom voicebots themselves. These voicebots are powered by Bland’s proprietary models that can hold non-scripted conversations at a best-in-class, human-equivalent cadence. The delight of early customers, who first used an early and slower Bland product built on public infrastructure and off-the-shelf models, in this product evolution highlights the importance of this differentiation.
By enabling functional area leaders to apply the technology to their business areas, Bland can enable a consistent experience across the organization in a way that is impossible with siloed, function-area-specific solutions. And, like any good automation platform, Pathways saves the time, money, and resources it would cost to build a bespoke solution.
Bland is already seeing the fruits of this GTM motion. One of their customers is a mid-market travel nursing agency for which the key limitation on growth is screening and recruiting qualified nurses. Their Director of Operations has already applied Bland to instantly call and further qualify any interested applicant. They’ve been able to build an AI voice agent that is instantly available to contact a candidate when they have demonstrated a bias to act — and outperforms humans doing the same job. This same customer now plans to expand from an initial use case in candidate screening to nurse retention, finance, and Tier 1 customer support, with the champion from operations supporting each of these function’s leaders in building their own automations.
Consider this simple example of how the New York Rangers ticketing office might build a bot to automate over-the-phone ticket sales. The bot can offer various packages, create urgency for the prospect, and handle the booking process, while being aware of buyer frustration or indecision and also handling these politely and with patience.
Beyond expanded investment in an already high-performing go-to-market motion, this Series A will fund significant continued investment in R&D across the many dimensions relevant to a best-in-class calling automation product:
- The ability to handle increasingly complex end-customer requests
- Further infrastructure investment to allow for faster and ever more human-like conversations
- A capacity for identifying and revising weaknesses in the capabilities of already-deployed AI agents
Amid an AI landscape that is moving with tremendous speed, it is this sort of nimble approach in applying the latest-and-greatest in AI research to a rich business problem that we at Scale are focused on investing in. We’ve been thoroughly impressed with Bland’s success in productizing Voice AI to date, and we’re thrilled to be partnering through this Series A investment.
