IBB Ventures invests in the expansion of Tucan.ai's automated meeting summary software
Berlin, September 20, 2021 - IBB Ventures today announces its investment in Tucan.ai, a meeting summary software from Berlin. In the course of this, the telecommunications group Telefonica is further expanding its cooperation with the start-up and thus specifically promoting digitalization through AI-based software. In addition to Wayra, Faraday Venture Partners, APX and IBB Ventures are among the lead investors in the seven-figure financing round.
Increased productivity thanks to more efficient meetings
The team around Tucan.ai founders Lukas Rintelen, Florian Polak and Michael Schramm is developing an AI software that automatically transcribes and summarizes video conferences and business meetings. This allows meetings to be recorded in the most popular meeting platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams, as well as offline meetings. To do this, the software uses automated speech and content recognition to clearly summarize conversation content. All meetings are stored centrally and can be quickly retrieved via a search mask. In addition, Tucan.ai enables automated result protocols to be shared with all meeting participants with a click.
"Today's situation is ironic," says Florian Polak, Co-Founder and Managing Director. "Despite technological advances, we are increasingly wasting energy and productivity in more and more meetings." In traditional office jobs, an entire workday is spent on meetings each week on average. "For most companies, a four-day week would be easily possible, and without any loss of productivity," adds Lukas Rintelen.
Wayra Germany invests and offers access to Telefónica
In addition to the investment, Wayra Deutschland also offers Tucan.ai the opportunity to gain Telefónica Deutschland as a direct customer. This is based on the venture client model, through which Wayra Deutschland promotes international start-ups that then work with Telefonica's various business units to integrate innovative technologies like those of Tucan.ai directly into business processes.
"We are convinced of the potential of Tucain.ai, because handling communication processes in companies more efficiently is now more than ever a focus topic and AI-based software an important key to more productivity. Tucan.ai has the potential to revolutionize the meeting culture in companies with its software: With this, we can help shape the way we work tomorrow - more productivity with the same number of working hours per week," says Florian Bogenschütz, CEO of Wayra Germany.
IBB Ventures, Faraday Venture Partners and APX are further investors
In addition to Wayra Germany, the founding team was able to convince angel investors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as the VC IBB Ventures and the European investor network Faraday Venture Partners of their software and collect a seven-figure investment sum. Also participating in the investment round is Berlin-based VC and existing investor APX, the early-stage investor backed by Axel Springer and Porsche that has supported the startup since 2019.
"Software has completely transformed our working lives over the last 20 years. In the last year, the way we work together has changed fundamentally once again. Tucan.ai aims to rethink meetings in this environment by using software to enable automated collaborative workflows. We believe that Tucan.ai addresses a huge market potential and that there will be a growing demand for such solutions to manage meetings in a time-efficient way and to use valuable resources in a more value-adding way", says Robert Kusche, Investment Manager at IBB Ventures.
Tucan.ai hits the nerve of the time
With its AI tool, Tucan.ai wants to help companies handle their communication processes more efficiently. After all, communicating in a targeted and purposeful manner in the professional environment can make management processes more productive and thus directly relieve employees. Especially since during the Corona pandemic the number of daily meetings increased dramatically due to increased remote work, Tucan.ai solves an acute problem of many companies with its software. The four-day workweek has also been on the horizon as the work model of the future for some time: with an efficient, lean meeting culture and simplified communication processes, it can become a reality.
"Lockdowns have led to a further digitalization of our professional as well as private communication. Tucan.ai addresses exactly this topic and thus hits the nerve of the time. We see great potential in the automation of collaborative workflows," said Anastasia Troyanov, Investment Manager at APX.
"Faraday is committed to investing in founders who have a clear vision and a particular understanding of their market. Video conferencing has grown exponentially but our meetings have still not become more efficient. We strongly believe that Tucan.ai has found a way to address these issues and will play an important role in defining the future of work," says Dennis Kirpensteijn, Managing Director for Faraday in Germany.
About Tucan.ai
At Tucan, we're rethinking the way we conduct meetings. We offer software that automatically takes notes for you, analyzes their notes, and even summarizes them. Our goal is to enable everyone to focus on what's important in meetings. We take care of the rest. Tucan.ai was founded in 2019 by Florian Polak, Lukas Rintelen and Michael Schramm. For more information, visit www.tucan.ai.
Presscontact Tucan.ai
Presscontact Wayra Deutschland
Sarah Schrödel
PIABO PR
wayra@piabo.net
+49 174 176 37 38
About IBB Ventures
IBB Ventures (www.ibbventures.de) has been providing venture capital to innovative Berlin-based companies since 1997 and has established itself as the market leader in early stage financing in Berlin. The funds are primarily used for the development and market launch of innovative products or services and for business concepts in the creative industries. Currently, two funds with a total volume of EUR 100 million are in the investment phase. Both VC funds are financed by funds from Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), managed by the State of Berlin. In addition, IBB Ventures invests in startups affected by the Corona crisis from its "Corona Aid for Startups" program. IBB Ventures has already invested in more than 240 creative and technology companies in Berlin; in consortia with partners, the startups received approximately EUR 1.62 billion, of which IBB Ventures has invested more than EUR 240 million as lead, co-lead or co-investor. IBB Ventures is the umbrella brand for the VC activities of IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft.
Contact
Robert Kusche
IBB Ventures
Bundesallee 210
10719 Berlin
Tel: +49 (0)30 2125 3201
Mail: info@ibbventures.de