GoButler is pivoting
The Story
is nixing its consumer-facing service altogether and launching Angel.ai, a NLP service for commercial domains that will provide businesses with an off-the-shelf solution to facilitate natural language-powered transactions.
A little background
GoButler started out as a service that provided virtual assistants to bring you anything on-demand. Now the company is pivoting and rolling out Angel.ai, which will enable commerce companies to build conversational user interfaces, such as Facebook Messenger chat bots. [TechCrunch]
Amazon is taking on Uber in the food delivery world
The Story
Amazon launched Amazon Restaurants’ Prime Now service this week, officially throwing its hat into the food delivery ring.
So...Amazon Prime for food delivery?
Yep. The service is offering Prime subscribers free one-hour delivery from more than 350 Manhattan restaurants, including Le Pain Quotidien, Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken, Junior’s Restaurant & Cheesecake, John’s of Bleecker Street and Num Pang. Amazon first rolled out this service in Seattle last September, and is now looking to compete with Seamless, Caviar, DoorDash and UberEats in Manhattan. [Crain’s New York]
Grey Jean Technologies, and AI-powered personalization platform for retailers, launches
The Story
Grey Jean Technologies, the AI-powered personalization company that provides retailers with the most accurate predictions of consumer behavior, launched this week with $2 million in seed funding.
A little background
Grey Jean also announced that Hiro Sake, a hand-crafted premium spirit company, and Namco Pool, America's largest dealer of quality swimming pools and related products, are two of the first companies to implement Genie, Grey Jean’s groundbreaking AI-powered recommendation engine. [Business Wire]
Momofuku brand expands to on-demand
The Story
This week, David Chang, the owner of the Momofuku restaurants launched Ando, an on-demand delivery restaurant.
Why this is awesome
As the latest entity in the Momofuku franchise, Ando doesn’t offer a front of the house or dine-in experience. Instead, Ando is engineering a menu geared specifically toward delivery, and only delivers in Midtown East. This makes sense, as this neighborhood hosts thousands of corporate employees but offers limited food options. [TechCrunch]
Fundings of the week
Bark & Co, $50 million
Investors: August Capital, RRE Ventures, Resolute Ventures
Bark & Co is the company behind the largely popular monthly subscription service , which delivers a curated box of dog treats and toys to owners’ doors each month. Building upon the success of BarkBox, Bark & Co launched three additional businesses to build out its dog-centric brand, including BarkShop, BarkPost and BarkLive. [Built In NYC]
Pebble Post, $5 million
Investors: Greycroft Partners and Tribeca Venture Partners
Pebble Post analyzes the activity of online shoppers and sends them snail mail with special discount offers from the e-commerce websites they visit. [New York Business Journal]
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