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Comment by justboxing | Hacker News Reader

> I.am+’s first enterprise customer is Deutsche Telekom AG (DTEGn.DE), the German telecommunications giant and parent company of T-Mobile. Since July, the company has been using Omega to power an AI customer support chatbot and it plans to add a voice phone system soon, i.am+ said.

Wow. I had no idea ChatBots needed $117 MILLION in funding to ship.

A quick search of GitHub shows several 100s of chatbots, even 1 with just 200 lines of code. https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agithub.com+chatbot

This has Juicero written all over it.

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> A quick search of GitHub shows several 100s of chatbots, even 1 with just 200 lines of code.

Also why does Dropbox need funding? I can write a 2-line shell script that calls rsync.

I have no clue what I.AM.PLUS is; this is a general comment:

Sure, creating a dead simple chatbot is easy! But you can't compare a bare-minimum open-source dumb chatbot with a enterprise AI company that happens to take the form of a chatbot.

Enterprise is a funny word here. It just seems like any other voice assistant except it connects to your inventory control system rather than your Nest at home. It seems like mostly marketing to me, I doubt the technology is particularly unique.

That's pretty much just what Enterprise is, though... a consumer product, sold at a much higher price, and including things companies need like support and customization.

Unique technology is absolutely not a requirement to build and ship useful and impactful product.

> Wow. I had no idea ChatBots needed $117 MILLION in funding to ship.

You don't. But the startup game is often not so much about shipping, but more about name recognition and connections.

Agreed. Still, $117 MILLION seems really excessive. How many people do you need to build, ship, market and support an AI Chatbot?

This is after $89mm if I am reading it right

A little tongue in cheek, but maybe not:

7M chatbot development

14M enterprise marketing materials

28M accounting and compliance response to enterprise requirements

56M enterprise sales team & expenses

12M reserve & voice mail development

They'll need another round in less than a year.

You sound like a solo programmer not considering any aspects on how to run a company that serves a global client base.

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