Intercom, a technological enterprise based in Ireland, plans to further invest $94 million (€87 million) in artificial intelligence (AI) with a goal of dominating the market, according to the CEO, Eoghan McCabe. The announcement was initially made via an organisational email, before being later shared on McCabe’s personal social media accounts. He keenly referred to this investment as a “major new venture” aiming to take full advantage of the vast opportunities ahead.
Intercom offers a software platform that amalgamates messaging products for sales, customer service and marketing. The firm’s offerings enable businesses to engage effortlessly with customers through their own websites, applications, email, and social media platforms.
Discussing this development with employees, McCabe emphasised the necessity for enhanced productivity to achieve the targets. He reassured staff that strategies were being developed to overcome any areas of weakness within the company. McCabe insisted on the seriousness of Intercom’s ambition, leaving no room for complacency.
Focusing on the specifics of the investment, McCabe expressed the hope that AI would eventually take over all knowledge work, starting with the most repetitive tasks. He provided customer service as an example, stating the work is mostly repetitive and does not utilise a person’s full potential. He believes AI will initially take up customer service roles.
McCabe pointed out the annual expenditure on customer service salaries is well over $350 billion. He predicts the majority of this amount will be redirected towards AI technologies in the future. This is the reason a number of firms, from large-scale ones like Salesforce and Zendesk to smaller companies like Ada and Forethought, are pursuing this avenue so ardently, he added.
In this increasingly competitive industry, we are leading the charge. Both major and minor players are observing and following us. I can confirm this because I’ve had personal interactions with their chief executives, and their decisions reflect this as well.
He suggested that various enterprises would reap benefits from the multi-billion dollar Artificial Intelligence market. Emphasising Intercom’s ambition, he said the company intends to invest heavily from its sizeable cash reserves to become the market’s dominant entity.
The organisation is set to invest an extra $94 million to expand its machine learning team significantly – from 19 to 72 members by the end of the following year. Achieving this task will be absolutely challenging, but will significantly boost their ability to produce high-quality AI technology at a faster pace, he stated.
In addition, the company will recruit 22 more personnel in other areas of its research and development department. An additional annual budget of $13 million has been allocated for marketing expenditure, making the total amount $37 million.
He offered the possiblity that under poorer-than-expected revenue growth, the company’s cash reserve would decrease from $130 million to $69 million by the end of 2027. However, he predicted cash-flow positivity at this point. He also declared – on expectations of robust growth – that they could reach break-even sooner or increase investment aggression.
Intercom was co-founded by Mr McCabe, Des Traynor, Ciarán Lee, and David Barrett in Dublin in 2011, and maintains a presence both locally and in the US. Among their clientele are Microsoft, Amazon, Aer Lingus, Scottish Power, Eurotherm, Atlassian, Shopify and New Relic. The company achieved unicorn status within the tech industry in 2018 after securing $125 million in fundraising that raised the enterprise’s value to $1.28 billion.