A company called Gitshup has just raised $60 million to help bring AI into messaging for companies.
Now, they're doing some interesting things that I haven't actually seen other places, but at the same time, I think their story is really interesting because this company is not new.
With a lot of these companies where you see people launching these really interesting AI use cases, where they're bringing AI to, I guess, businesses or things that already exist, they're kind of competing with the incumbents.
In this case, Gitshup is an the incumbent to the point where it's been around for 20 years.
So after 20 years, how are they still able to raise $60 million?
They're talking all about the latest IPO that they're going to do.
And so a lot of people are asking, you know, like, how has this company basically not died, but also, you know, what, what kind of value have they added?
How are they able to keep raising money?
And I think the story is really interesting and could be a roadmap for many other companies, but I'll get into all of that.
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All right, let's get into what's going on with GitHub.
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There's a link in the description, AI Box .ai to try that out.
All right. So GitHub, they raised $60 million.
Basically what their company does is they're a kind of like a backend where you can, where companies can set up AI agents that interact with people via text message so they it's not necessarily like a competitor to whatsapp i would say or something like that because they actually integrate with whatsapp and a bunch of other players so they have a couple interesting things they have a whatsapp messaging api so you could basically leverage uh whatsapp if your customers are already on there now this is much bigger in other companies in other countries than america um they have noted one of the biggest
industry or biggest countries is actually india so the problem with america is a lot of people i think are you know on their iPhones with their blue bubble text message on iMessage.
Most of the world other than America is on WhatsApp and they actually interact with businesses.
I remember taking a trip to Brazil a number of years ago and basically every business there had like their WhatsApp and that's how you contact them.
If you have customer support requests, if you want to schedule something, like you just, they have their WhatsApp number and that's basically how everyone communicates there.
And the nice thing about that is for countries where, you know, carrier fees can to be expensive.
SMS can be expensive.
It's all over internet.
So if you have access to Wi -Fi, you can get this rich data.
You can set images of questions and stuff and integrate with a lot of cool tools like GitHub.
So basically what they've done is they've been building tools that essentially allow customers and companies to talk.
That's what they've been doing.
And they've been doing that for 20 years.
I think they were a lot more relevant in their first offering when they were basically like a WhatsApp competitor.
They're like, look, look, skip out on paying for SMS, use this.
And so they didn't really gain all of the, like they didn't grow as fast as WhatsApp did.
So they have definitely had to pivot.
They've been around for 20 years.
They've done a lot of pivots.
And the latest thing is basically that you're able to now deploy AI agents in text or voice mode.
What I think is interesting is they actually raise at a billion dollar, over a billion dollar valuation back in 2021.
And so they got a lot of kind of like news coverage for this.
Um, this was, yeah, well, $1 .4 billion round of funding that they did 2021, which of course is when all startups had these sky high valuations.
And so it's, is really difficult for any company that raised during that period afterwards to have kept up with the valuation, right?
Money was really easy.
These valuations were very high and you've had to have serious business growth after the fact in order to maintain these valuations.
So they haven't actually said what their new valuation is on this round.
they's like, Oh, it wasn't a price round.
Like, and then basically what I'm reading from it is, uh, they raised, you know, they raised, I think $340 million, which is huge, a billion dollar over a billion dollar valuation.
And, um, shortly after that fidelity, which actually led that round, um, they slashed their internal valuation on the startup at least three times between 2023 and 2024.
So they actually brought it as low as $486 million.
So they literally raised 340 million.
and Fidelity, their lead investor on that round set, actually there only were $486 million total.
So basically, and this is also, I think, pretty, this is basically what we're seeing as well with this latest round.
They've just raised $60 million, but that's, they said about half of that is equity and half of that is debt.
So they probably raised like $30 million and then $30 million worth of debt.
So you're not getting the amount of money you used to get in 2021.
And I think a lot of companies are going to be in this exact same position, but honestly, kudos to them for continuing to raise and continue to push the product forward. They've added AI.
And so this seems like it's the new kind of sphere, the new level that they need to be able to go and raise more money and keep the company going.
Now, essentially what's interesting here with AI, I think they basically said, you know, you can't just plug an AI model straight out of, you know, ChadGPT and just basically have your customers talk to ChadGPT about your company.
Like that's not going to work.
You need to do a bunch of custom things, right?
You got to like give it data about your company.
you got to tell it how to respond and how to behave. And there's a whole bunch of things you got to do.
And there's different companies that are doing this, but this is one of the areas that they're essentially tackling.
So if a company were to send you a message on WhatsApp, you tie into their backend and train the agent and you deploy an agent to respond to them and talk to them.
So this is what they specifically said about it.
This is their CEO Seth, he said, there's a lot of demand coming from enterprise.
Everybody needs to build these AI agents, which work through messaging like RCS and WhatsApp or through voice.
So building on these agents, there's a huge demand and we need to support it.
It's interesting because voice is one of the big things they highlight on their website.
And it's actually not that crazy.
Like if you figured out the AI agent for text, you can go grab an API to 11 Labs or a number of other services and offer the voice element as well.
And so this is kind of cool that they're building this out.
Globally, obviously, AI agents are getting really popular.
Basically, every major company is working on them.
What I would say is Getshop essentially has said they don't think this is a big threat to them.
Their CEO pretty much pointed out that they have 50 ,000 customers across more than 100 companies, countries.
And I think 50 ,000, honestly, when I heard that, it didn't actually sound like a huge number for a company that was formerly valued at a billion dollars.
But these are businesses, right?
50 ,000 businesses. It's not just users.
Probably way more users messaging that.
In fact, I think they have said that on their website, they share exactly how many, you know, a lot of their key analytics.
So 45 ,000 customers, 60 plus countries serve.
This is on their website.
So I was reading a TechCrunch article.
Maybe they quote them higher there or maybe it's misquoted.
But in any case, they said they have 120 billion plus conversations per year that companies are having or that customers are having with the company.
So, you know, maybe 45, 50 ,000 customers and then 1 .2 billion conversations or messages.
So I guess you could send like 20 messages in a conversation.
So whittle that down a bit, but messages that are being sent by customers, which I think is, which is kind of interesting.
And actually, I think the 120 billion was specifically conversations.
So I'm giving that 120 billion conversations, largely led out of India.
I think that's the biggest geographic area that they're targeting.
game. So this is what they said.
They said businesses cannot simply use foundation models off the shelf and just put them in front of customers.
They need a lot of customization to be done.
And that's where Gap Shop comes in.
That's what we provide.
Um, they have said though, right?
So like I'll give them a lot of crap for raising a lot of money and then raising less money.
Honestly, no shade.
I think they're doing a great job, uh, trying to push their company forward and obviously has the skill perhaps the way they'd hope.
But they did say that since the their last round, they have tripled their revenue and they grew it profitably.
They weren't really clear on if they had an increased valuation and not clear basically means no, they did not have an increased valuation, obviously a much decreased valuation.
One thing that I do think is interesting was when asked about this was how they responded.
So Seth said, as a founder, you focus on value and the valuation will follow.
When he was asked whether he would still continue the startup, out a quote unquote unicorn.
He says, we operate ourselves like we're going to be a big company.
So all of this is very interesting.
They're obviously growing quickly.
I'll be super curious to see how they continue in the future.
If this is sustainable, they said that they're focusing on a big IPO, which will be very interesting to keep up with.
I will keep you up to date on all of that.
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