Focusing on AI intelligent customer service based on large models, "Reindeer AI" completes a 60 million yuan strategic financing | 36Kr exclusive.
Written by Wang Fangyu
Edited by Su Jianxun
36Kr has learned that recently, Beijing Antler Intelligent Technology (hereinafter referred to as "Antler AI") has completed a strategic financing of 60 million yuan. This round of financing is led by IDG and Shanda Capital, with Wanshi Capital and Yuanhe Capital serving as professional advisors. The funds raised will be mainly used for technology research and development and team expansion, especially the introduction of high-end talents.
Antler AI is an AI Agent company co-founded by alumni from Tsinghua University and Stanford University and serial entrepreneurs. As an AI application layer enterprise based on a general large language model (LLM), Antler AI is committed to providing AI intelligent customer service and sales robots for enterprises in different industries through highly customized AI solutions to help enterprises reduce costs and increase efficiency.
It is reported that Antler AI has developed mature intelligent robot solutions for multiple industries, including e-commerce, financial services, telecommunications and Internet services, education and training, logistics and express delivery, medical and health services, and tourism and hospitality. And it has carried out cooperation with some leading enterprises in the above industries and achieved remarkable results.
With the gradual shift of Chinese users' habits to the online, the demand for customer service is increasing. Intelligent customer service emerges as the times require and becomes a vibrant emerging track. The "2024 China Intelligent Customer Service Market Research Report" points out that the overall market size in China in 2023 is 3.94 billion yuan, and the compound growth rate from 2022 to 2027 is expected to reach 22.6%.
AI technology, especially the maturity of large language models, further opens up the growth space of intelligent customer service - large models have strong natural language processing capabilities, the ability to learn and adapt to new scenarios, "can think and speak", which can significantly improve the experience and efficiency of intelligent customer service.
"After ChatGPT was launched in November 2022, we realized that the large language model has made a decisive breakthrough in voice intelligence, so we have been firmly researching and developing in this field. Currently, Antler AI can already provide enterprises with a 100% all-robot alternative online sales and customer service solution." Zhou Shuang, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Antler AI, told 36Kr.
After more than two years of continuous research and development and investment, Antler AI has made considerable progress in products, technology, and the market.
According to Zhou Shuang, the intelligent customer service developed by Antler AI can achieve a nearly human-like natural effect in human-computer interaction through refined tone, conversation rhythm, and word choice optimization. In unexpected situations, the robot can also flexibly use a deeply customized enterprise model and common sense base to provide timely and accurate responses.
This is supported by Antler AI's multi-model collaboration technology. It is reported that this technology can intelligently select the optimal model for processing according to the task difficulty and type. Multiple internal models call and supervise each other to ensure the accurate and efficient completion of the task.
In terms of functions, Antler's AI customer service can not only efficiently handle the entire process of customer service before, during, and after sales, but also actively develop customers at the sales front end. By in-depth analysis of the business processes, operating specifications, and private data of the enterprise, a dedicated AI model is customized for each enterprise to provide a solution that fully fits the business goals.
For different industries and application scenarios, Antler AI has also developed a robot framework that adapts to different business logics and can be continuously optimized and adjusted according to the amount of data processed. And the deployment time of highly customized robots can be shortened to within one month or even shorter.
Compared with the previous generation of AI technology, the improvement in the intelligence level of large language models is obvious, but there are also problems with output accuracy and hallucinations. To solve this problem, Antler AI has independently developed a multi-round conversation automatic test system for the commercial scenarios of large language models. This system has currently passed the test of more than 10 million pieces of information, which can ensure that the AI customer service can still provide stable and reliable solutions when facing complex problems.
At the same time, Antler AI uses its self-developed Prompt Flow framework combined with its self-developed automated testing framework and data governance system. By organizing data and dividing model boundaries according to business logic, the controllability of the business system based on the large model is significantly improved, thereby eliminating the common "hallucination" problem of large language models.
Through cooperation with partners in various industries, Antler AI's intelligent sales robot has begun to help many enterprises independently achieve an online sales volume of hundreds of thousands of yuan per month, while the intelligent customer service robot has begun to independently handle hundreds of thousands of customer information for many enterprises every day, effectively replacing hundreds of customer service teams.
Customer service has always been a labor-intensive industry, and the emergence of AI intelligent customer service technology has helped significantly reduce the workload and cost of labor. Zhou Shuang told 36Kr that Antler AI has greatly improved the operational efficiency of enterprise customers and reduced the cost to one-fourth or even lower than that of the original manual customer service, helping them gain a significant advantage in the highly competitive market.
Recently, Antler AI announced a strategic cooperation with Baichuan Intelligence, where Baichuan Intelligence will provide domestic large language model support for Antler AI. The two sides will jointly explore more high-quality customers in the field of intelligent customer service and sales robots to further deepen the market layout.
"With the continuous improvement in the capabilities and price reduction of large models, most of the online customer service work can be replaced by artificial intelligence in the next two to three years." Zhou Shuang said. In the next step, Antler AI will continue to focus on technology research and development and product iteration to help more enterprises achieve cost reduction and efficiency increase, and promote the industry towards a more automated and efficient future.
Views of Investment Institutions:
Shanda Capital Deputy CIO - Cathy Ge said: "Globally, the application of AI Agent has become a key trend for enterprises to improve efficiency and reduce operating costs. With its strong technical capabilities and innovative solutions in the fields of intelligent customer service and sales, Antler AI shows potential in the global market. Compared with other AI products, Antler AI achieves a higher rate of manual replacement and has a leading advantage in the full-process automation of customer service and sales. This not only brings a fundamental change to the service model of enterprises but also sets a benchmark for the future application of AI technology in different scenarios."
Innovative Workshop Partner Wang Hua emphasized: "The Antler AI team has a strong technical background, and the management team comes from Tsinghua University and Stanford University. They have rich experience in technological innovation and product implementation. We believe that Antler AI not only performs well in the current market but will also promote deeper changes in the industry in the future. Through the comprehensive replacement of intelligent customer service and sales, Antler AI improves the operational efficiency of enterprises and brings more possibilities for the future development of the industry."