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, which focuses on AI-powered conversational interfaces, has raised a $7.3 million Series A round led by .

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Based in Mountain View, Passage AI was founded in 2016 by a trio of Silicon Valley veterans with backgrounds in deep learning and artificial intelligence: alumni and , and alumnus .

The financing represents the company鈥檚 second raise in less than eighteen months. The round also includes participation from previous investors , , , and a number of angel investors. In a seed round that was announced last September, Passage AI raised $3 million from a group of investors including and .

So far, the startup鈥檚 customers have primarily been in the retail, auto manufacturing, and online learning sectors. , , (PwC), , , , Calgary Public Library, and are among its customers.

Passage AI plans to use the latest capital infusion to 鈥渁ggressively expand鈥� into new industries and international markets.

鈥淥ur platform is inherently language agnostic because of the way we do classification and deep learning,鈥� Raj told Crunchbase News. 鈥淪o it鈥檚 completely language neutral. As such, we鈥檙e seeing a lot of interest from large corporation in Asia and Europe, and we鈥檙e planning to use this money in part to expand to those continents.鈥�

As part of the financing, Blumberg Capital Managing Director will join Passage AI鈥檚 board of directors. San Francisco-based Blumberg focuses on early-stage investments.

Market demand has led to Passage AI being one of the fastest growing early-stage SaaS companies Blumberg has come across, according to Taragin. The startup has created a bot-building tool that uses AI and natural language processing technologies, requires no coding, and can be deployed anywhere in two weeks.

鈥淭he accuracy and ease of use of Passage AI has captured attention鈥攁nd dollars鈥攆rom blue chip G2000 companies,鈥� Taragin said in a press release. 鈥淲e are excited to work with Passage AI to fuel continued growth in the conversational AI sector.鈥�

Aside from ease of use and technical chops, the startup has also shown the ability to make money. Passage AI surpassed $1 million in annual recurring revenue within six months of launching its product in the second half of 2017 and currently has 20 employees, according to Raj.