Ruben Harris and Timur Meyster, the founders of upskilling platform Career Karma, today announced the launch of OutRival, a service that hosts and allows businesses to create their own customer service agents to support interactions with customers.

AI agent companies are hot right now, and AI is one of the only venture capital sectors seeing an influx of money. In September, the venture capital industry invested at least $64.1 billion in the AI ​​sector and a third of all venture capital dollars this year went to AI startups, according to PitchBook data reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Startups creating AI agents alone have raised more than $8 billion this year, according to PitchBook data reported by The Verge.

Although OutRival is entering a crowded field, Harris believes it’s the perfect time to take aim at the industry. Harris said he and Meyster saw how important personalized interactions are, as well as the limitations of existing systems such as automated phone calls.

“Today, with AI, not only are businesses across industries integrating technology into their core operations, but AI is fundamentally changing the way they do business and the way people work,” Harris said at TechCrunch. “We knew there had to be a way to scale personalized experiences using AI while making the technology accessible to the people closest to the customer journey. »

His company aims to differentiate itself from competitors by helping — rather than replacing — existing consumer teams, encouraging them to easily create AI agents that can work with existing tools and systems to facilitate conversation with customers. customers. The company has been operating in beta mode for two years and says it is already working with college admissions teams to facilitate workflow. It plans to expand to other sectors.

Harris says Career Karma will continue as a separate company, currently owned by OutRival. (It’s even releasing a Netflix documentary on October 16 in partnership with Workday and LeBron James’ SpringHill Company on hiring overlooked talent). Harris told TechCrunch that they took everything they learned creating Career Karma and applied it to launching OutRival.

“Career Karma taught us the power of personalized, human-centered interactions and how important it is to scale these experiences without losing the human touch,” he said. “OutRival takes what we built for Career Karma and evolves it, making it accessible to businesses across all industries. »

Harris says Career Karma will now use OutRival’s technology to improve its own operations, creating AI-based support to help with its career training platform.

Investors are clearly up for it. OutRival is tapping remaining capital from the $40 million Series B Career Karma round raised in 2022 and says its investors, including Jack Altman and Initialized Capital, are excited to see what he and Meyster do next.

“We’re excited to partner with more companies and show how OutRival can be a game-changer in delivering exceptional customer experiences,” Harris said.

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