Artificial Intelligence is promulgating its significance across verticals in the marketing industry. Unfazed by the daunting challenge of taking on some of the biggest names in the domain in the dynamic AI marketplace, a newbie has made a major breakthrough on Monday. Cien, Inc. scored a $1 million seed funding from leading tech investors and equity firms. The Miami-based AI startup plans to expand its product line further and scale up its workforce in the US and Europe.

“We are thrilled by the reception our AI enabled mobile Sales Productivity app has received from both the business and investor communities,” said Rob Käll, CEO and Co-founder. The round closed in late 2016 and Stanley ‘Stash’ Jacobs of Greenberg Traurig represented the company.

Cien, Inc. currently offers Cien AI app to sales professionals, providing them an opportunity to leverage Cien’s revolutionary AI-backed sales enablement and intelligence capabilities. The sales AI app from Cien provides informative insights on SaaS software and technology, capturing lot more than just data from the customers. According to the Cien team, AI will replace the traditional SaaS platforms, enabling scalable automation to improve sales operations in the future. Research firm Tractica evaluates the AI industry touching $36 billion by 2025. IDC’S Worldwide SaaS Enterprise Applications 2014-2018 Forecast and 2013 Vendor Shares projected SaaS enterprise applications industry will plateau at $50 billion in 2018.

Despite accelerations in SaaS CRM applications market, the competitive AI industry is fast catching up. Between 2017 and 2022, worldwide revenues from AI market will grow 10X; mostly driven by startups providing AI solutions based on machine learning, natural language processing and cognitive learning.

Co-founder Margot Carter who also sits on multiple public and private company boards added, “Virtually all forward-thinking companies are discussing how to use AI to gain a competitive edge. Cien offers an easy solution where it matters the most; in improving Sales Productivity.”

Optimizing Sales Productivity is the easiest way to make any company grow faster and more profitably. However, until now, many things that affect productivity; like team mood, macro factors such as competition and the quality of leads have been intangible and impossible to measure.

Jerome Rose, VP of Sales at a multinational IT services firm said, “The revolutionary tools that Cien offers executives, helps them identify areas of improvement within their sales team and helps them report meaningful metrics to their executive leadership team and investors.  Cien’s mantra: ‘Measure what Matters’ means that things that previously were just gut feelings can now be incorporated into our management strategies.”

“People are talking a lot about Predictive Analytics, the ability for AI enabled tools to see into the future, but to be truly useful you also want Prescriptive Analytics, i.e. what you should do next with this information,” Ben Strum, CTO and Co-founder said. “That’s what our new ‘Cien Mentor’ feature delivers. When you act on these insights you can get ROI of over 1,000%,” Rob Käll added.

Cien, Inc., founded in 2016, has affirmed with its immediate plans to use the fundraising proceeds to expand their sales and marketing efforts, and set up a product development and operations center in Barcelona, Spain.

“We chose Barcelona because of the excellent balance of quality of life and cost of living, which attracts world-class talent from all over the world. The current strong US dollar also makes this a very attractive economic proposition,” Rob Käll said.