TextYess, a start-up founded in Milan in 2023 by Riccardo Russo and Edvaldo Gjonikaj (pictured left), which has developed an AI-powered CRM for e-commerce brands – now used by more than 350 companies, including Ducati, Veralab and PittaRosso – has announced that it has closed a €4 million funding round. The round was led by Italian Founders Fund, with participation from existing investors VC Partners and Entourage, bringing the total capital raised since the company’s inception to over €7 million.
In 2024, the company launched its AI retention marketing agents on WhatsApp to enable e-commerce businesses to respond to customers, recommend products and recover sales; today, this new round of funding comes at a time of significant transformation for the company, which is committed to building a CRM system managed autonomously by AI agents.
Today, customer relationship management – encompassing messaging, marketing campaigns and customer support – is one of the main drivers of turnover for e-commerce businesses, but it also remains one of the most complex areas to manage. Traditional software provides the tools, but leaves the entire operational burden on the teams’ shoulders – such as defining targets, creating content, reviewing it and sending it out. As the number of channels, segments and campaigns grows, the workload increases, often forcing companies to choose between hiring new staff or continuing to send generic, ineffective messages such as the classic mass emails with the same discount codes for everyone.
“When we launched TextYess, we gave brands a more effective channel: WhatsApp, managed by AI agents that turn conversations into sales. Having worked with more than 350 brands, we’ve realised that the real limitation has never been the channel itself, but the time needed to manage it. Brands know what they should be sending and to whom, but they don’t have enough staff to manage it all. That’s why we’re building both: the CRM, and the AI agents that manage it on their behalf. And this is just the beginning,” said Riccardo Russo, CEO and co-founder of TextYess, in a statement.
TextYess overcomes these limitations with AI agents that operate on a CRM system which brings together each user’s orders, conversations and purchasing behaviour into a single profile. The AI agents independently identify opportunities to act on, define target audiences and create personalised campaigns and automated workflows, coordinating across email, WhatsApp and the website. Thanks to direct integration with the brand’s online shop and catalogue, they can also check stock availability, update customers on deliveries or manage returns requests. All of this takes place whilst maintaining human oversight at all times: the agents propose optimisations and the team approves them.
The new capital raised will be used to accelerate growth in two main areas. On the one hand, the company will focus on enhancing its product, strengthening both the CRM’s functionality and the AI agents through strategic new hires to the team. On the other hand, the funds will support international expansion beyond Italy’s borders, starting with the UK market, where the company already has its first operational clients.
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