Zencity raises $40M for state and local government AI assistant
Zencity, the Israeli data-analytics firm, announced on Tuesday that it’s raised $40 million to fund a new AI assistant tool that will be rolled out to state and local governments.
According to the announcement, Zencity’s AI assistant will help governments reduce the amount of time spent gathering and understanding community input by helping leaders to create new engagement projects, survey questions, suggest images, create landing pages and automatically translate them into dozens of languages for maximum accessibility. The investment, led by StepStone Group, brings the total venture capital raised by Zencity to $91 million.
The tool will allow users to create charts and reports, which the announcement said will allow government leaders to bring community input into the process of decision-making. The assistant is also being designed as an analyst that can answer questions about data in plain language, cross-referencing from sources including surveys and social media, the announcement continued.
Zencity said the recently raised funds will also be used to hire professionals in engineering and data science and to enhance customer service for Zencity’s local government customers on four continents.
Zencity, which claims 8 out of the 10 largest U.S. cities as customers, works with state and local agencies, including law enforcement, by scanning social media platforms to gather public opinions on issues like government performance and events, including disasters and other public-safety incidents. Recently, the city governments of New York and Dallas, as well as the Los Angeles Police Department, have become customers.
“AI-powered capabilities, like the one we’re launching today, put best-in-class technology in the hands of local government leaders that will accelerate that goal, by lowering barriers to seeking community input, and more easily making sense of data we will drive outcomes for the communities that our government partners serve,” Eyal Feder-Levy, Zencity’s chief executive, said in the announcement.
The new AI assistant is currently being beta tested by some Zencity customers. The company said it will made widely available this summer.
