Artificial intelligence has been around for quite a while now, and it's already made a strong impact on many sectors. It should be no surprise that customer service has been one of the most affected ones, and it looks like we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's possible, too. Many changes are coming up on the horizon, and with the fast adoption rates that we're seeing in many companies, it's only a matter of time before this technology will have an even more central spot in the current environment. Machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) are pretty much at the forefront of these developments. They have an inherent link with customer service that's hard to ignore, especially when it comes to direct interaction with users.

Good science fiction excels at tapping contemporary anxieties to forecast the future fate of humanity. Consider the list of workforce automation fears showcased in the recent "Kerblam" episode of the TV series Doctor Who: Robotized megacorporations, computer-controlled commerce, ubiquitous unemployment, human irrelevance and destructive despair. There's no spoiler in sharing that -- aside from some teleportation and a sonic screwdriver -- everything in the story line is already pretty plausible. The Doctor may be sci-fi fantasy, but the issues are real. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is already reshaping many manufacturing and service industries, and it is rapidly disrupting other sectors as well -- for both good and ill.

Though deals to private artificial intelligence companies -- excluding incubator/accelerator rounds -- fell 10% in Q2'16, dollar funding reached an all-time high. That was partly thanks to 3 $100M mega-rounds by companies using AI: a $154M Series A round went to China-based healthcare startup iCarbonX (with the participation of Tencent, Vcanbio), a $100M growth equity round was raised by New Jersey-based Fractal Analytics (from Khazanah Nasional Berhad), and there was a $100M Series D round raised by California-based cybersecurity unicorn Cylance (from investors including Blackstone Group, Insight Venture Partners, and Khosla Ventures). Our AI category includes companies applying AI solutions to verticals like healthcare, security, advertising, and finance as well as those developing general-purpose AI tech. Nearly 70% of the deals went to startups in the United States in Q2'16. A majority of the startups raising funds were still in their early-stages: Nearly 60% of the deals went to startups raising seed/angel and Series A rounds, while mid-stage startups (Series B and C) received 12% of the deals.