PMSI supports Praetura Ventures in £2.4m investment round in Futr

Machine learning start-up Futr has secured £2.4m in seed funding, in a round led by VC firm Praetura Ventures. The funding will be used to accelerate delivery of the firms’ ambitious tech road-map, with the team more than doubling this year to meet the large demand for Futr’s products.

Founded in 2017 by Andy Wilkins and Lee Skyrme, Futr’s conversation-as-a-service is already powering clients across a range of industries, including the police, central and local government and a number of leading private sector organisations. Futr’s technology simplifies how organisations deliver their services on the channels that their staff and consumers use every day, like Alexa, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, in over 100 languages.

With Futr’s plug n’ play model, integration with existing systems old and new can be fast-tracked, providing users with a single intelligent chat interface that overlays any number of back-end systems. The products cover a wide range of internal and external conversation solutions, for instance providing an organisational assistant for employees, and 24/7 self-service for citizens or customers. This comes as consumer appetite for instant, natural language communication with brands and public services is higher than ever, with the market set to grow to $15.7 billion by 2024, at a CAGR of 30.2%.

Futr has already been invited to partner with a number of global tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft – who identified Futr as ‘a top priority partner’. The funding will enable them to further this growth and expedite feature development of the Futr platform. To support these new tech capabilities, Futr will be significantly growing its team of developers, data engineers and data scientists.

PMSI worked closely with both Praetura Ventures and Futr in providing CDD support for the deal.