11x Secures $24 Million in Series A Funding to Revolutionize Digital Work with AI

11x Secures $24 Million Series A Funding Led by Benchmark to Create the Future of Digital Work

Investment to Accelerate the Development of AI-Powered Digital Workers and Expand Global Footprint SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 11x, a pioneering AI startup transforming the modern workforce with autonomous digital workers, announced closing a $24 million Series A funding round today. The round was led by Benchmark, with participation from Quiet Capital, SV Angel, Abstract Ventures, Lux Capital, Operator Partners, Visionaries, Activant, HubSpot Ventures, Project A, 20VC, 20Growth, and 20Sales. Founded in 2022 by CEO Hasan Sukkar, 11x simplifies Go-to-Market (GTM) operations with AI-powered digital workers, allowing teams to focus on strategic work. "We don't target SaaS spend; we target hiring budgets. We're in the business of selling work," said Guillaume Roux-Romestaing, Head of Partnerships at 11x. Addressing the GTM Challenge Over the past two decades, the landscape of GTM tools has become increasingly fragmented. The proliferation of specialized software -- from CRMs and marketing automation platforms to sales engagement tools and data enrichment services -- has burdened revenue teams. "Since Salesforce was invented in 1999, the accumulation of specialized GTM software in teams has led to fragmented systems and bloated operational costs. Each new tool often requires its own integrations, maintenance, and training, ultimately eliminating any efficiency gains these tools were supposed to provide," explained Keith Fearon, Head of Growth at 11x. The 11x Solution 11x is redefining the workforce by developing AI-powered digital workers that autonomously execute workflows in revenue teams. By automating roles traditionally performed by employees, these digital workers can be "hired" to handle tasks efficiently and at scale. "The key is to unbundle specific tasks traditionally performed by employees and to re-sell them," noted Sarah Tavel, General Partner at Benchmark. Earlier this year, 11x launched "Alice," an AI-powered Sales Development Representative. Alice has gained significant traction by helping companies grow on autopilot by automating prospecting, multi-channel engagement, and personalization at scale. The recent launch of "Jordan," an AI phone rep focused on inbound lead qualification, has already received interest from businesses aiming to streamline their "speed to lead" processes. Investment Impact and Growth Plans The Series A funding will accelerate 11x's product development pipeline, expand its team, and enhance its global market presence, particularly in the US market, where the company has recently relocated its headquarters. The team continues to grow there, attracting key hires from leading tech companies such as CTO Prabhav Jain (former Head of Financial Services Engineering at Brex). "In two years, we believe that digital workers will be a regular part of how companies around the world operate," said Hasan Sukkar. About 11x 11x is an AI startup founded in 2022 by Hasan Sukkar. The company specializes in developing autonomous digital workers that automate Go-to-Market (GTM) workflows, enabling organizations to increase efficiency and reduce costs. 11x focuses on automating roles in GTM teams such as Sales, Marketing, and Revenue Operations. For more information, visit 11x.ai. Contacts: Keith Fearon - Head of Growth @ 11x Email: [email protected] Photos accompanying this announcement are available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/611dfd4d-804c-49a2-83fe-94fbdcdbff65 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/52cc596e-a9c8-4d71-b427-dbfa36170db5 Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Exclusive: AI digital employee startup 11xAI raises $24M led by Benchmark

11xAI, a startup that builds AI bots for process automation, aka automating end-to-end workflows, just raised a fresh $24 million Series A led by Benchmark. It also one of the growing crowd of AI startups relocating its headquarters to San Francisco, Hasan Sukkar, the company's founder and CEO, told us. It was founded in London. The Series A comes about a year after 11xAI raised a $2 million seed round led by Project A Ventures. Founded in 2022, the company calls its AI agents "automated digital workers" and like others in this field, its pitch is that its software can handle repetitive tasks, allowing human employees to focus on more strategic work. The company focuses on go-to-market teams, like sales, marketing, and revenue operations. It started out with Alice, an AI sales representative, and has now launched Jordan, which serves as an AI phone representative. "He sounds like a real human. He can have conversations up to 30 minutes in real-time in a way that's really intelligent," Sukkar said. He says the company is also approaching $10 million in annual recurring revenue and says it counts companies like Brex, Datastax, and Otter as customers, according to its website. "Thinking ahead, there will be two additional digital workers that we are launching in the coming months," Sukkar continued. "All of this is part of our plan to build a suit of deeply integrated agents" -- or virtual employees, he added, that have names and faces with job categories they are trained on. The 11xAI digital workers are currently trained on 25 languages, including Swedish, Italian, German, and Hebrew. Sukkar previously told TechCrunch that he was working on a bot named James and one named Bob trained to do talent acquisition and human resources tasks, but Sukkar said the company decided to release Jordan, the phone representative, first. While Sukkar obviously believes that autonomous agents are the future of the workforce, he also says that such agents are in the very early days of innovation. "Instead of traditional software, which is tools and workflows that make people slightly more productive or efficient, agents enable us to automate activities in a way that operates on autopilot, in a way that requires no humanity, in a way that is extremely high skill," he says of his vision of a highly proficient, no-human-required workforce. When AI agents can reliably replace humans in manual processes, "it would be a shift almost as big as the internet or the cloud," he said. But 11xAI is not without competition in this area. Large established competitors include companies like UiPath, ServiceNow, and even Salesforce. Plus, as we previously reported, AI sales bots are such a fast-growing AI market that there are a good dozen of them beyond 11xAI that are growing quickly, VCs have told TechCrunch. Some of the others include Docket, Regie.ai, AiSDR, and Artisan. Investors, like Sarah Tavel, a general partner at Benchmark, who led the $24 million Series A, is quite bullish on 11xAI, though. Tavel, who also wrote a thesis on the importance of AI in work software, now joins the board at 11xAI. Sukkar said that the company received about eight investment offers within ten days, "it was a really fast process," he said. "We leaned into partnering with the team at Benchmark because of the alignment on the thesis and their track record as one of the most successful investors in the world." Other investors in the round included 20VC, Project A, Lux Capital, and SV Angel. The company will use the money to further product development and expand its team, which currently has a headcount of 27. The company will retain an office in London, though most key staff will be relocated to SF. "I started 11x out of an experience where, in one of my first ever jobs, I did, back when I was a student, a lot of work that was monotonous and repetitive," he said, adding that he recalls wishing there was a computer that would do it for him and how much human potential is wasted every day doing such laborious tasks. "Agents enable us to automate in a way that redefines what's possible."