Hyro, a leading provider of plug-and-play conversational artificial intelligence (AI), has successfully raised $20 million in a Series B funding round. The funding was led by Macquarie Capital, with participation from new investors Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, Black Opal Ventures, and K20, as well as existing investors Hanaco Ventures, Spero Ventures, and Mindset Ventures. This latest round brings Hyro’s total funding to $35 million.
The funding will be used to meet the growing demand for conversational AI and automation in the healthcare sector. Hyro aims to streamline access to digital services for patients and staff in large organizations while improving operational efficiencies. The company plans to hire top talent across various departments, expand its no-code platform for AI-powered call center, web, and mobile solutions, and forge strategic partnerships and integrations in key industries where it has already gained traction.
Hyro has experienced significant growth, with annual recurring revenue increasing by over 100% year over year since its launch in 2020. The company has delivered exceptional conversational experiences to over 30 million enterprise consumers, resulting in substantial operational savings for its clients. Hyro expects the funding round, coupled with the rising popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and other large language model (LLM) applications, to drive doubled growth in these categories.
With 47% of the current US-based healthcare workforce expected to leave the industry by 2025, Hyro is well-positioned to address the increasing demand for AI and natural language understanding (NLU) solutions. As digital expectations for healthcare services continue to rise, health systems will need to compete for patient acquisition and satisfaction with a dwindling staff. Hyro’s AI-powered communications can bridge the growing labor gap and help organizations streamline interactions surrounding critical workflows.
Hyro specializes in plug-and-play chat and voice interfaces that can handle up to 85% of routine tasks, relieving the burden on overloaded healthcare organizations. Unlike intent-based solutions that require machine learning training data, Hyro’s system requires zero training data and eliminates client-side maintenance efforts. It updates information in real-time and integrates with existing omnichannel workflows, centralizing communications, improving access to services and care, and reducing operational costs.
One of Hyro’s key differentiators is its Conversational Intelligence, which includes analytics and performance metrics to provide organizations with full visibility and a feedback loop for optimizing data. The company’s technology has been recognized by Gartner, naming it a 2022 Cool Vendor for its unique natural language processing (NLP) and knowledge graph technologies.
Hyro has a strong foothold in the provider segment, with clients like Mercy Health, Baptist Health, and Intermountain Healthcare. The company’s recently released Spot™, a GPT-powered assistant, has gained significant demand as health systems seek generative AI implementation partners with a proven track record. Spot™ is already deployed in three large healthcare organizations.
Dan Phillips, Executive Director at Macquarie Capital’s venture group, will join Hyro’s board as a director. Phillips emphasized the increasing consumer expectation to interact with companies via voice in a way that reflects human behavior. He believes Hyro, with its expertise in regulated environments like healthcare and the utilization of large language models, is well-positioned to thrive as expectations and reality align. Macquarie Capital is excited to partner with Hyro on its journey.
