Dialpad Raises Additional $10M from SoftBank Corp. to Accelerate Product Expansion in Japan and APAC
Dialpad expands footprint in APAC, empowering global workforces with Voice Intelligence through its AI-powered cloud communications platform
SAN FRANCISCO — December 21, 2020 — Dialpad, Inc., the leading AI-powered cloud communications platform, today announced that SoftBank Corp. (“SoftBank”) joined a previous $100M Series-E funding round, led by OMERS Growth Equity, through a $10M investment. SoftBank’s investment will deepen its existing, 4-year strategic partnership with Dialpad, and drive business growth in Japan and the greater APAC region, leveraging SoftBank’s significant resources.
In total, Dialpad has raised $250 million, at a valuation over $1.2B, as it drives innovation in the Unified Communications and Contact Center markets. Dialpad’s patented Voice Intelligence enables AI-powered real-time business optimization, delivered through coaching, automated note-taking, sentiment, and transcription analytics. Dialpad helps businesses and contact centers deliver amazing customer experiences while enabling employees to communicate through voice, video, and messaging, in a single platform.
“Today’s pandemic has accelerated the inevitable move to the cloud and the work from anywhere movement for business communications by at least 10 years, requiring companies to expedite digital operations and deploy smarter, more efficient cloud communication tools,” said Craig Walker, CEO of Dialpad. “Dialpad’s AI-powered single platform for voice, video, and messaging allows remote employees and contact center agents to be productive from anywhere, and have real-time insights that enhance their productivity. Our deepening partnership with SoftBank will accelerate innovation and bring our best-in-class communications tools to more companies in Japan and the broader APAC region, helping them build stronger businesses.”
The investment marks Dialpad’s fourth year working with SoftBank in Japan. Together, the partnership has helped more than 1,000 customers and 50,000 users including human resources services provider Randstad, sports brand Asics, Japan’s largest travel agency, H.I.S., and elevator and escalator manufacturer Fujitec migrate their telephony system to a cloud-based platform.
“Voice Intelligence is an untapped technology that can revolutionize the future of work,” said Kunihiro Fujinaga, Senior Vice President at SoftBank Corp.’s Enterprise Business Unit. “Unfortunately, as The Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications points out, 98% of voice calls are not fully digitalized or utilized. When voice is integrated with other cloud applications, users can learn from every conversation and gain new levels of efficiency. Together with Dialpad, we will continue to advance digital communications and elevate productivity and data insights to new heights.”
“The importance of voice communication cannot be stressed enough in today’s new work paradigm,” said Motoaki Ishii, Senior Director in charge of Digital Voice Solution Development at SoftBank Corp.’s Enterprise Product & Business Strategy Division. “To truly unlock its potential, we need to integrate it with real-time speech recognition, natural language processing and voice analytics on a system that works anywhere, on any device. We’re thrilled to continue our partnership with Dialpad to define a new way of working.”
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“Collaborating with SoftBank over the last four years has been a great journey. Together we have enabled the work-from-anywhere paradigm in Japan by helping businesses migrate their phone systems to the cloud,” said Tenshi Adachi, GM, Japan & APAC, Dialpad. “We’re thrilled to begin this new phase in our relationship and bring Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) along with our leading video conferencing and Voice Intelligence platform to the Japanese market.”
About Dialpad
Dialpad is the leading cloud communications platform for AI-powered calling, conferencing and contact centers. Dialpad's proprietary, real-time Artificial Intelligence engine, Voice Intelligence (Vi), helps businesses make smarter decisions. Built on the Google Cloud Platform for unmatched security and reliability, Dialpad is easy to deploy, integrate and scale. Today, more than 7,000 of the world’s most innovative businesses use Dialpad and its seamless integrations with Google G Suite, Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, Zendesk and others to allow every user to be more productive. Customers include Twitter, WeWork, Uber, Stripe, Netflix, Motorola Solutions, Splunk and Domo. Dialpad is backed by Amasia, Andreessen Horowitz, Felicis Ventures, GV, ICONIQ Capital, OMERS Growth Equity, Salesforce Ventures, Scale Ventures, Section 32, SoftBank Corp. and Work-Bench. Visit www.dialpad.com for more information.