$140 Million IntelePeer Funding to Aid Channel

Artificial intelligence (AI)-led communications automation platform IntelePeer has secured $140 million for its "growth funding and debt financing efforts."

The investment from a handful of investment firms will allow the former communications-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) provider to continue its newfound AI and automation push.

This round of IntelePeer funding brings the total amount to 13 rounds, or $392.1 million, according to Crunchbase.

"In addition to increasing our investment in our product and development teams, we will allocate funds to continue the growth of sales and marketing efforts, including our channel partners initiatives," a spokesperson for IntelePeer told Channel Futures.

You may recall that in January, IntelePeer's channel partner program got a fresh director in ex-NICE and Genesys executive Geoff Chretien.

IntelePeer Funding Doesn't Address Direct AI Sales

With nearly 90% of companies having deployed or planning to deploy generative AI technology, according to Bain & Company, the opportunity for those in the space appears grand.

Bain & Co. further noted that 87% of companies will prioritize generative AI deployments, listing it among their top five priorities for the next three to four years.

IntelePeer is confident in its AI business, and betting on winning a portion of that projected spend, noting that it more than doubled its AI business in the past year. And it is working harder than ever to get its AI technologies into the hands of more customers as the AI gold rush persists.

Partners need to do their due diligence and become AI experts if they want to make money on AI beyond earning a percentage of an initial sale.

IntelePeer's model is not too dissimilar from others. It gives its channel partners a portion of sales when they sell IntelePeer platforms, all of which have AI sprinkled throughout them via their AI Hub — although there is no standalone AI platform.

If most vendors did offer a standalone AI platform, channel partners could profit from a more explicit AI sales possibility; yet, only a few are doing so now.

IntelePeer Undergoing Reinvention in Real Time

Earlier this month, before the news broke of the IntelePeer funding, the company had been on a bit of an innovation binge, releasing SmartCommunicator for Microsoft Teams.

The tool facilitates what IntelePeer calls "intelligent presence and skill-based routing" for incoming text, email, and voice-based customer communications using individual or shared inboxes.

In April, IntelePeer integrated with Microsoft Azure's OpenAI service.

The IntelePeer that once associated itself with CPaaS appears to be no more, as its push is now on reinventing itself through AI. The same story can be applied to countless other vendors.