Europe-based Prosus Ventures, a specialist e-commerce and artificial intelligence (AI) investor, has led a $US6.4 million ($9.8 million) pre-Series A funding round for Australian customer support software company Brainfish.
The round has been supported by existing investors including Surge, the seed investment partner of Peak XV (formerly Sequoia, India and South-East Asia), and Sydney firm Macdoch Ventures.
The new funding is to be used for Brainfish to accelerate global expansion, initially focusing on the US, as well as scaling up its engineering team and accelerating product development.
According to co-founder and chief executive Daniel Kimber, Support systems that wait for customers to experience problems and then issue assistance tickets are outdated, he believes.
“Support should be seamlessly embedded inside the product,” he said. “That’s why we built Brainfish. Our ambient AI agents, fused with computer vision, don’t wait for problems. They watch how people actually use a product, understand where they struggle and deliver the right answer before they even ask.”
He expects invisible, intelligent, instant support to become the new standard for digital products.
Singapore-based head of South-East Asia, Australia and New Zealand investing for Prosus Ventures, Sachin Bhanot, said: “As more businesses, especially SMEs, turn to AI to deliver better customer experience at scale, Brainfish stands out as a category-defining solution. Their ability to combine real-time support with deep behavioural insights is a game-changer, and we’re excited to back their next phase of growth as they expand into the US market.”
Kimber said combining generative AI with computer vision enables Brainfish to deliver proactive contextual help the instant a user gets stuck.
“We collaborated with [AI computer chip maker] NVIDIA to build a vision pipeline that continually learns from real user behaviour,” he said. “By running on cutting-edge AI infrastructure, our system delivers real-time personalised support that evolves with every product update – helping customers get answers faster and reducing friction at every step.”
Founded in 2022 and launching its first product the following year, Brainfish claims it now serves more than five million end-users worldwide. Customers include local tech companies Relevance AI and Mad Paws (ASX: MPA).
Prosus Ventures is the venture capital arm of Euronext Amsterdam-listed lifestyle e-commerce company Prosus. Other Australian investments include digital twin technology company Neara.
Image: Prosus Ventures South-East Asia investment head Sachin Bhanot.