BNP Paribas has led a $30 million funding round in Digital Reasoning, a FinTech firm that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to understand human intentions and behaviours.
Barclays and Square Capital also joined the funding round, alongside previous investors including Goldman Sachs, Nasdaq, Lemhi Ventures, HCA and the Partnership Fund for New York City.
The global head of strategic investments within BNP Paribas’ global markets business, Angel Rodriguez-Issa, has joined the board of directors at Digital Reasoning as part of the deal.
The investment will allow Digital Reasoning to expand its product portfolio for capital markets and wealth management use cases, and accelerate its use of AI for speech analytics, natural language understanding and expand its go-to-market capacity.
“Global financial institutions are turning to AI to help drive digital transformation in order to improve revenues and efficiencies,” said Brett Jackson, CEO of Digital Reasoning.
“The speed and accuracy of Digital Reasoning’s AI system transforms large quantities of structured and unstructured data about employees, clients, and competitors into valuable human-centric business insights.”
Olivier Osty, head of global markets at BNP Paribas, added that digital transformation is a focus of the investment bank’s 2020 plan.
“It’s a transformation based on reinventing our clients experience, advancing the use of data and analytics and improving our operating efficiency… The partnership amplifies BNP Paribas’ commitment to innovative technology and harnessing it to help us better serve our clients,” he said.
“The new investment will enable us to use our novel and patented AI technology to turn all forms of communications data – including now audio and voice data – into discoverable, understandable, and actionable insights that help to accelerate customer-centric data strategies in the world’s largest Enterprises,” Tim Estes, president and founder of Digital Reasoning concluded.