Congrats Parloa!
Series D
Parloa: Agentic AI for the World’s Most Human Interactions
At Altimeter, we ask ourselves: where are the killer AI applications that will transform industries? Customer experience is one of the largest and most consequential.
We first partnered with Parloa in February 2024, leading their Series B. We doubled down in March 2025, co-leading their Series C. Today, Parloa has raised a $350M Series D led by General Catalyst at a $3B valuation—and we couldn’t be more excited about their trajectory.
The Problem
The call center agent job is brutal. 63% of agents report high burnout. Annual turnover runs high around ~35%—more than double other occupations. For employers, turnover costs $10,000-$21,000 per employee—a vicious cycle. This isn’t just a labor problem—it’s a customer experience problem. Burned-out agents can’t provide empathetic service, and customers expect personalized, immediate help across every channel.
AI offers a fundamental reimagining. An AI agent doesn’t get frustrated after its 50th difficult call. It remains patient and consistent—whether it’s the first interaction or the ten-thousandth. This isn’t about eliminating humans; it’s about deploying AI where it excels and freeing human agents for high-value conversations. Global spend on contact centers is $500 billion annually—enterprises leading this shift are fundamentally rebuilding their customer interaction stacks around AI.
Designed for Large Enterprise
Parloa is not building for SMBs. This is a large enterprise solution—purpose-built for Fortune 200 companies with complex contact center environments and millions of customer interactions. Enterprise contact centers involve integrations with legacy telephony (Genesys, Avaya, Amazon Connect), CRM platforms, payment gateways, and dozens of backend systems across multiple geographies and languages.
This is not a self-serve motion. Parloa deploys Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs)—technical experts who embed directly with customer teams to implement and operationalize the platform. When deploying mission-critical AI into complex environments, you need engineers on the front lines. Once Parloa is embedded in a Fortune 200 contact center, switching costs are substantial.
Built for Global Complexity
Parloa’s success in Europe demonstrates its ability to win in the world’s most demanding market—a proof point for global scalability. Europe is uniquely complex: 24 official EU languages, strict regulatory requirements, and challenging labor economics. English-speaking offshore agents cost $5-6/hour; German-speaking agents cost $15-17/hour—roughly 3x more. A pan-European enterprise serving customers in Germany, France, Italy, and the Nordics faces a staffing nightmare.
AI changes this equation. Parloa’s AI Agent Management Platform is generative AI-native—not a legacy system with LLMs bolted on. AI agents speak 100+ languages, and when human agents take the call, they can too with real-time translations. A single agent handles German, French, Dutch, and Swedish—no separate teams required. The platform handles natural language briefings, enterprise integrations, and large-scale simulation testing before deployment. If you can win in Europe’s regulatory, linguistic, and labor complexity, you can win anywhere.
The customers speak for themselves. Multiple Fortune 200 companies including Booking.com, Allianz, Swiss Life, and HealthEquity. Swiss Life routes calls 60% faster with 96% accuracy. Berlin Brandenburg Airport’s multilingual voice agent achieved 85% CSAT. These aren’t pilots—they’re production deployments handling millions of conversations.
The Path Forward
Having proven the platform in Europe’s most demanding environments, Parloa is now scaling aggressively in North America—the largest market for enterprise software. The team is crushing it. Chris Silver joined as CRO from Five9. Latané Conant joined as CMO from 6sense, where she helped scale the company from 75 to 1,200+ employees. Together with Csaba Tamas (CPO, ex-AWS), they round out an executive team built to win in enterprise. With offices in Berlin, Munich, and Manhattan, Parloa has surpassed $50M ARR and quadrupled revenue since our Series B.
While customer service is the beachhead, Parloa’s vision extends across the entire customer experience. Every touchpoint becomes conversational—not just support calls, but apps, websites, and proactive outreach. AI agents that proactively identify problems, guide onboarding, and surface upsell opportunities—turning the contact center from a cost center into a growth engine. The opportunity is not just to automate customer service—it’s to fundamentally improve how businesses connect with their customers. That’s the vision Malte and Stefan have pursued since founding Parloa, and why we’ve partnered with them across three funding rounds.
Disclaimer
The information presented in this newsletter is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the view of any other person or entity, including Altimeter Capital Management, LP (”Altimeter”). The information provided is believed to be from reliable sources but no liability is accepted for any inaccuracies. This is for information purposes and should not be construed as an investment recommendation. Past performance is no guarantee of future performance. Altimeter is an investment adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Altimeter and its clients trade in public securities and have made and/or may make investments in or investment decisions relating to the companies referenced herein. The views expressed herein are those of the author and not of Altimeter or its clients, which reserve the right to make investment decisions or engage in trading activity that would be (or could be construed as) consistent and/or inconsistent with the views expressed herein.
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