Red River Insights - Agentic AI's top10
Who hasn't heard of AI Agents by now?
Red River Insights - January 2025
Dear Friends,
AI agents are undoubtedly one of the hottest topics in the tech world today, and for good reason. These autonomous entities, powered by sophisticated algorithms, are designed to perceive their environment, make decisions, and take actions to achieve specific objectives. Whether it’s enhancing customer service or solving complex challenges, AI agents are transforming industries and reshaping the digital landscape.
Imagine a world where autonomous digital workers take on every repetitive and replaceable task, make precise decisions, and seamlessly interact, not just with humans, but also with other AI agents. This vision is no longer science fiction; it’s becoming a reality.
The buzz around AI agents is backed by impressive market forecasts. The global AI agents market is projected to soar from $5.1 billion in 2024 to an astounding $47.1 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 44.8% (Source). This explosive growth reflects the increasing recognition of AI agents as a key driver of productivity and innovation.
This month, leveraging our powerful data platform, RAMP, we’ve identified and analyzed the top 10 most promising Agentic AI startups disrupting the industry.
RAMP's Agentic AI top10
We hope this sparks interesting conversations. If you have any comments or would like to suggest a startup that should be included, feel free to reach out to us. Abel, Chloé, Ignacio, Joseph and Olivier will be delighted to discuss these trends and rankings.
(Ranking established on 13/1/2025)
We've highlighted 6 key trends illustrated by these companies
Customer Service and Support Automation
This category marks a transformative shift in customer interactions, driven by AI agents designed to revolutionize support services. By delivering instant responses, autonomously resolving issues, and managing multiple interactions simultaneously, they drastically reduce wait times and enhance customer satisfaction. Notably, projections suggest that by the end of 2025, AI will power 95% of customer interactions (Source).
What sets certain solutions apart is their ability to function as AI co-workers rather than mere tools. Unlike traditional AI agents that focus solely on automation, AI co-workers integrate more seamlessly with human teams, taking on repetitive tasks while enabling employees to focus on higher-value work. For example, Neople is pioneering AI co-workers tailored to support e-commerce customer service teams. Additionally, platforms like Parloa and Cognigy act as orchestrators, managing and automating complex customer interactions across multiple channels, highlighting the adaptability of these technologies to varied business models.
Sales and Revenue Operations
AI agents in sales and revenue operations (RevOps) are transforming how businesses approach lead generation (LeadGen) and revenue management. These tools automate tasks like prospecting, lead qualification, and outreach while leveraging analytics to predict trends and provide actionable insights. With 81% of sales teams adopting AI (Source), these systems are streamlining workflows and driving better conversion rates.
AI agents have the greatest impact in LeadGen, where they automate repetitive tasks like prospecting and outreach, significantly accelerating the sales funnel. For example, 11x develops AI-powered digital workers to handle these tasks, enabling sales teams to focus on closing deals. They are also increasingly valuable in RevOps, providing insights for better pipeline management and resource allocation. Companies like dealcode AI automate B2B sales processes, freeing up teams to concentrate on strategic, relationship-building efforts.
Enterprise Knowledge Management and Learning
The enterprise knowledge management and learning sector is being revolutionized by AI, enabling organizations to better manage, distribute, and utilize their collective knowledge. These AI systems go beyond simple data retrieval, offering personalized learning experiences and unlocking insights from accumulated data. By 2026, 80% of enterprises are expected to use Generative AI APIs and models, up from less than 5% in 2023 (Source).
Sana drives innovation with its AI-powered platform, centralizing knowledge and integrating with workplace tools to provide personalized learning while automating administrative tasks. Meanwhile, Phacet targets SMEs with tailored AI solutions, streamlining back-office operations like ERP, CRM, and CMS. Sana excels in comprehensive organizational knowledge management, while Phacet focuses on boosting operational efficiency for smaller businesses, highlighting the versatility of AI in this field.
AI Development and Infrastructure
The AI development and infrastructure category forms the backbone of the AI revolution, offering tools and platforms that enable the creation, fine-tuning, and combination of AI agents. These solutions include platforms for developing and training AI models, cloud-based services, and specialized hardware optimized for AI computations. This category empowers organizations to build, scale, and deploy AI applications with efficiency and reliability.
For example, E2B is pioneering open-source infrastructure that allows developers to run AI-generated code securely in cloud sandboxes. This accelerates development while ensuring safety and reliability.
Process Automation and Workflow Optimization
Process automation and workflow optimization are critical applications of AI agents, streamlining business operations by automating repetitive tasks and optimizing complex workflows. Unlike traditional chatbots, which follow predefined scripts, agentic AI systems possess autonomy and contextual understanding, enabling them to perform more complex tasks without constant human oversight.
DeepOpinion, one of our portfolio companies, leads in this domain with its agentic automation platform. This platform allows enterprises to automate complex knowledge work processes through AI agent applications, combining business process digitization, low/no-code development, and generative AI to deliver substantial ROI for clients.
Multilingual and Voice-Enabled AI
Multilingual and voice-enabled AI systems are transforming global communication, enabling seamless interactions across languages and speech formats. A multi-agent architecture is particularly effective in this domain, with specialized agents handling specific languages, accents, and dialects. This ensures accurate understanding, natural responses, and adaptability to diverse cultural contexts. Additionally, this architecture allows for easy scalability, as new languages or voice capabilities can be integrated without disrupting existing functionality.
In voice-enabled AI, agents can focus on processing speech variations, improving recognition accuracy, and supporting context-aware, conversational dialogues. Companies like SynthFlow AI exemplify this trend, offering human-like conversational AI voice assistants capable of delivering personalized, multilingual interactions. This combination of multilingual and voice-enabled capabilities is becoming an essential tool for businesses seeking to engage a global audience with seamless and efficient communication.
More on RAMP's scoring method
The ranking of these startups is based on the estimated momentum of the company but the algorithm does not assess the quality or reliability of the products/solutions developed by these companies!
Find out about the algorithm behind this ranking and the way scores are calculated here: Cheat sheet on RAMP
In case you missed them, our latest top 10s are here:
- December 24: France
- November 24: E-Commerce
- October 24: Global Defence
- September 24: Supply chain
- July 24: Travel Tech
- June 24: Developper tools
- May 24: Robotics
All the previous Top 10 are here.
RRW Team News
We are excited to announce that Ignacio Alfeirán has joined the Red River West team as our new Investment Analyst. Based in Madrid, Ignacio will be working with us while completing his studies at IE University.
Ignacio brings experience from his roles as a Platform Management Intern at Kibo Ventures, a key player in the Spanish VC ecosystem, and as a consultant at ALTIA Consultores. He also serves as a board member of the Private Equity & Venture Capital Society at IE University.
Welcome, Ignacio!
In addition to this, a few travel plans for the team:
This week, Chloé is traveling to Barcelona on Wednesday and Thursday, followed by a visit to Madrid on Thursday and Friday.
Next week, Olivier and Abel will represent RRW at IPEM in Cannes
→ Don’t hesitate to reach out if you’d like to arrange a meeting with them there!
Data-Driven Hackathon
Last week, we co-organized the first-ever data-driven VC hackathon with the help of BivwAk! by BNP, bringing together brilliant minds from the ecosystem for two days of innovation and collaboration.
The event concluded with inspiring pitches judged by a panel of top industry experts and an insightful panel discussion on the future of data-driven VC. We’re especially proud of our tech lead Maxime Dolores, who was part of the winning team Pulse. Their project stood out for redefining market insights through dynamic company classification and trend detection.
We also took the opportunity to announce an exciting new project (details to be revealed soon), but we’ll share all the information in next month’s newsletter.
A genuine thank you to the jury, sponsors, and participants for making this an unforgettable experience. It was a fantastic showcase of what’s possible when data meets creativity!
Learn more on our Linkedin page.
Portfolio news:
The Exploration Company’s founder and CEO, Hélène Huby, has been honored as Manager of the Year 2024 at the BFM Business Awards. This recognition follows a remarkable year for the company, including the launch of its first demonstrator, Bikini, and achieving the largest Series B funding in the European space industry. With the upcoming launch of Mission Possible and the Nyx Earth capsule, the company continues its mission to pioneer collaborative space exploration. (More here)
Jiko raised $29M in its Series C funding round, with strong support from existing investors and the addition of new board members and an advisory committee of industry-leading banking and asset management professionals. This milestone supports Jiko’s mission to transform corporate cash management with its innovative T-bill platform, delivering unmatched safety, liquidity, and yield for treasury teams. (More here)
WeMaintain has expanded its expertise beyond elevators to include automatic doors, fire safety systems, and IoT-enabled predictive maintenance solutions. Operating in cities like Paris, Lyon, Singapore, and London, the company now serves diverse sectors, including transport, retail, and hospitality, with major clients like SNCF and Monoprix. With over 250 employees, WeMaintain has been recognized by La French Tech 120 as one of the most innovative French companies, cementing its position as a leader in building maintenance and modernization. (More here)
iObeya is transforming automotive operations with its cutting-edge visual management solution. Stellantis, a global automotive leader, has successfully reduced meeting times by 50% while significantly boosting productivity through iObeya’s platform. This milestone highlights iObeya’s potential to enhance efficiency and collaboration across the automotive industry. (More here)
Robovision launched its AI Platform 5.8, revolutionizing real-time data processing with groundbreaking features like live camera feeds using WebRTC for instant visibility, custom GUIs for informed decision-making, and seamless camera integration with Basler compatibility and webhook automation. This update bridges data capture and action, enabling faster scaling with unmatched precision across industries. (More here)
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