Spanish startup INDISYS raises $5m from Intel and others to improve human-machine interactions

Intelligent Dialogue Systems (INDISYS), a company that specializes in machine-human interactions, announced today that it has closed a round of funding worth $5 million.

The round, led by Intel Capital and with participation from Inveready SCR, will be used to try and speed up the company’s international expansion.

INDISYS is a Spanish firm that provides businesses with natural language and dialog management solutions. The product itself is a multimodal, multi-platform and multilingual technology, which companies can use to make a “functional, social and emotional virtual intelligence” for consumers to interact with.

On the ground, that could mean virtual assistants for online customer service queries or virtual operators if you happen to be on the phone.

The latest batch of funding marks the first time that Intel Captial has invested in Spain. “INDISYS has a deep background in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and machine learning,” Erik Jorgensen, Investment Director at Intel Capital said. “We believe that natural language dialogue will play an increasingly important role in the way people communicate with their devices.”

So far INDISYS’ clients include large corporate banks, telecommunications and retail companies. Although the firm already has customers based in Europe, Latin America and the United States, it hopes the latest round of funding will allow it to accelerate its expansion into new markets.

To coincide with the investment, serial entrepreneur Ken Morse, who is based in Boston and Barcelona, will be joining the board at INDISYS. He said he had seen the company achieve its goals “relentlessly” over the last four years and felt “honored” to serve on its board.

INDISYS is headquartered in Seville and has been operating since May 2005. Intel Capital, meanwhile, has invested more than $10.7 billion in at least 1,257 companies over the last 11 years. Last year, this equated to $526 million in 158 investments, with more than half falling to companies based outside of Canda and the United States.

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