SA国际传媒

Instead of contracting with one of the many independent information technology (IT) consultancies or building an in-house team of IT professionals, some small and medium-sized businesses are instead opting for a different approach to IT support.

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NYC-based (formerly known as Electric AI) is a provider of real-time IT support services, facilitated through chat. The company offers troubleshooting, system administration, and software maintenance consultation through chat, and can deploy an in-the-flesh expert in situ for specialized work that can鈥檛 be facilitated over text.

Today, Electric that it鈥檚 raised $25 million 鈥渁s part of a Series B鈥� round, according to a statement the company provided to SA国际传媒 News. The round was led by ; , which led Electric鈥檚 Series A round in March 2018, followed-on in the Series B round announced today.

The round brings some new folks to the company. As part of the transaction, GGV Capital鈥檚 managing partner, , joins Electric鈥檚 board of directors. He appears to replace Michael C. Brown, founder and managing partner of , who was on Electric鈥檚 board as of Series A, which SA国际传媒 News covered at the time. Bessemer partner Bob Goodman, GP , and CEO remain on the board.

Additionally, the company announces that it鈥檚 added a chief operating officer and a VP of sales to its leadership team. Rani Yadev is the new COO at Electric. Previously, she was VP of marketing at meal kit delivery company . David Weiner was brought on as Electric鈥檚 VP of sales after scaling the inside sales team at real estate tech upstart .

For now, the expert on the other side of the chat window is more often than not a human. But that will change over time. Back when Electric raised its Series A round, CEO told SA国际传媒 News that 鈥渁bout 50 percent of support tickets aren鈥檛 about fixing broken things, but doing stuff like setting up an email address, turning on a firewall, or connecting to an enterprise platform.鈥� Workflows can be established for that sort of routine issue, and be facilitated using AI-backed chat bots.

In a statement, Denehy said that 鈥淭his past year has brought exponential growth for Electric and I鈥檓 proud to call us the fastest-growing company in our competitive set.鈥� The company says it now has more than 300 customers and serves the IT demands of over 10,000 of their employees.

Denehy told SA国际传媒 News that the company earned a 鈥渘ine-figure鈥� valuation in the deal. It鈥檚 possible that this is only part of a larger capital-raising campaign by the company.

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