Kasisto, AI provider to banks, brings total funding to $90 million

UPDATE: This article includes commentary from Dan Miller and Dylan Lerner.

Kasisto, a conversational artificial intelligence platform for financial services, recently closed an $8.25 million Series D round, bringing its total funding to $90 million to date.

The New York City company simultaneously announced that Don Layden, a former NCR Corporation executive, was appointed executive chairman of its board of directors. Together, these changes mean "we are well-positioned to enhance our market presence in conversational and generative AI for financial institutions," said Kasisto CEO and co-founder Zor Gorelov in a press release.

Kasisto's customers range from banks as large as JPMorgan Chase, the London-based Standard Chartered, the Sydney, Australia-based Westpac and the Toronto, Canada-based TD Bank Group, to community banks and credit unions including First Financial Bank in Terre Haute, Indiana, Meriwest Credit Union in San Jose, California, and Indiana University Credit Union in Bloomington, Indiana. 

"Kasisto is demonstrably one of the longest standing providers of virtual assistants that specialize in banking," said Dan Miller, lead analyst and founder of conversational AI-focused firm Opus Research, via email. In his view, Kasisto has set itself apart from other firms that provide tools for building chatbots and voicebots by "keeping its focus on banking and financial services while the hyperscalers pursue more general artificial intelligence," he said.

Kasisto's products include Kai-GPT, a large language model trained only on conversations and data in the banking industry that it tested with Westpac, and Kai Answers, which uses Kai-GPT to search a company's internal policies, regulatory filings, banking procedures and more to distill answers to questions posed by customers or members.

"I think the development of the broader 'platform' speaks to their ambition that AI-driven virtual assistants will play a larger role both within and outside the bank, perhaps one day becoming the face of the bank and handling most transactions, self-service, and engagement," said Dylan Lerner, senior analyst in digital banking at Javelin Strategy & Research. "That's more interesting than the usual promotion about how 'our chatbot can help relieve your call center of a few annoying calls.'"

The company's Series C fundraise, in August 2022, was co-led by Naples Technology Vendors and NCR Corporation. An extension was co-led by FIS and Westpac, and included investments from BankSouth in Greensboro, Georgia. 

"The potential to redefine customer engagement and improve operational efficiency through our advanced conversational and generative AI solutions is immense," said Layden in a press release.