German AI start-up Parloa triples its valuation to $3bn – Financial Times
German AI start-up Parloa has raised $350mn at a $3bn valuation, as it pushes to compete with US rivals in developing AI customer service agents.
The Berlin-founded group, whose customers include Booking.com, Allianz and Swiss Life, has tripled its valuation since May, underscoring the fervour among investors to back Europe’s leading AI groups.
The new funding was led by US venture capital firm General Catalyst and brings Parloa’s total capital raised to more than $560mn over the past four years.
Parloa chief executive and co-founder Malte Kosub told the FT the cash would be used to accelerate expansion in the US and Europe as well as to increase investment in product development and engineering.
He said customer service was emerging as one of the first areas of AI to deliver clear financial returns. “Large organisations need systems they can trust in production, not experiments,” said Kosub.
The US and China have led the race to develop generative AI, with groups such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google building “frontier” AI models.
But Europe’s start-ups are having success focusing on AI applications and services aimed at businesses. Parloa is one of several German AI groups that have attracted investor attention over the past year, including workflow automation group n8n and language specialist DeepL.
Meanwhile, German AI start-up Black Forest Labs recently tripled its valuation in little more than a year to $3.25bn as it quickly emerged as one of the world’s top developers of AI image generation.
Parloa, which has offices in Berlin, London and New York, said it generated more than $50mn in annual recurring revenue — a metric popular with fast-growing start-ups — in 2025, driven by new US contracts.
In the third quarter, revenue growth in the US exceeded that in Europe for the first time, highlighting the group’s shift towards the world’s largest enterprise software market.
Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, president and managing director at General Catalyst, said the rapid adoption of AI agents had created “a rare level playing field” for European software companies. The current phase represented a moment to “accelerate and capture market share” as adoption across large enterprises gathered speed.
In the US, Parloa is competing against start-ups such as Sierra, which was co-founded by Bret Taylor, chair of OpenAI.
Parloa has focused on voice-based automation, an area it says remains the most critical and technically demanding channel for global enterprises, where customer interactions are often complex and highly regulated. It integrates multiple large language models into its platform, allowing customers to switch between providers as needed.
