Sherpa.ai


Sherpa is a Spanish artificial intelligence company specialized in predictive conversational digital assistants. It was founded by Xabi Uribe-Etxebarria in 2012 and is based in Erandio and Silicon Valley. In 2018, Fortune magazine included it in its ranking of the 100 best artificial intelligence companies.

Trajectory

The company was created in 2012 with the aim of developing a predictive conversational digital assistant based on artificial intelligence algorithms for different companies, and provide consultancy in artificial intelligence. It is based in Erandio and Silicon Valley. In 2016 it obtained 6.5 million dollars in a funding round from Mundi Ventures and other private investors. By 2019 it obtained, in a second round, 8.5 million dollars. Sherpa is ISO/IEC 27001 certified.

Products

Its first product was a mobile phone application of the same name. Sherpa's products are predictive conversational digital assistants that learn from the user's context to anticipate their needs. They use 100,000 parameters from each user to answer requests. Also, they have developed a multi-purpose recommendation system for news, music, and filtering important emails.
There are free applications for Smartphones and tablets with over three million downloads. It was also factory-preset on Samsung smartphones as the default digital assistant until the Korean company launched Bixby.
Focused on business services, its assistants and its operating system are embedded in cars, smartphones, home speakers or appliances. It has agreements with companies such as Porsche and Samsung.

Awards

In 2017, it was ranked one of the 100 most innovative companies in the world, in the field of artificial intelligence by the US consulting firm CB Insights. The same year, it was finalist at the CognitionX awards for artificial intelligence in London, only surpassed by DeepMind, a company acquired by Google in 2014 for $500 million. It was recognized as one of the 100 best start-ups by the Red Herring Top 100 Global in 2017 and 2018, and one of the 100 best in Europe in 2019. Fortune magazine included it in its ranking of the 100 best AI companies in 2018. Its virtual assistant was considered the best personal assistant by AI Breakthough awards in 2019. According to Analytics Insight 2019, it is among the top AI companies 2019 along with IBM, Salesforce and DeepMind. By 2020, Datamation considers it to be one of the ten best artificial intelligence companies of the moment.

Work team

By 2018, Sherpa had 35 employees, most of whom were experts in artificial intelligence and many of them with PhDs in mathematics and other disciplines. According to the publication Innova Spain, Sherpa works with researchers and research centres at the universities of Granada, Deusto, the University of the Basque Country and Mondragón. Some of its advisors include Alex Cruz, president and CEO of British Airways, and Chris Shipley, who was considered the most influential woman in Silicon Valley according to the San Jose Business Journal.
Tom Gruber, co-founder and former CTO of Siri, joined Sherpa's working group in 2019. One year later, Joanna Hoffman, Steve Jobs' right-hand woman, joined as an advisor.