Espresso Capital provided an $8 million credit facility to Inference Solutions, a global provider of artificial intelligence technologies. The San Francisco-based company will use the capital to achieve key milestones prior to initiating another fundraise later this year.
“We’re delighted to be using venture debt from Espresso to help fund our growth as we continue to scale and expand market share,” Callan Schebella, CEO of Inference Solutions, said. “Espresso’s funding gives us the working capital we need to execute on our plan and reach the operational and financial milestones we’ve set for the company to position us for our next capital raise.”
Founded in 2011, Inference provides intelligent virtual agents to sales and service organizations to automate routine and repetitive conversations typically handled by live agents over voice, chat and messaging.
“We’re excited to partner with Callan and his team at Inference,” Will Hutchins, managing director at Espresso Capital, said. “Their continued growth and position as a market leader in this growing segment reflects their success in helping clients deliver measurably better customer experiences.”
Inference is backed by San Francisco-based PeakSpan Capital, which led the company’s $12 million Series A round in 2018. PeakSpan Capital is a growth equity firm focused on B2B/enterprise software companies.
“We’ve worked with Espresso before and liked their flexible approach to funding fast-growing companies,” Phil Dur, co-founder and managing partner at PeakSpan Capital, said. “The team has a deep understanding of what it takes to scale and build successful companies and knows how to structure their debt facilities to best support that growth.”
“Not only did Espresso come highly recommended from our board, they are also truly unique,” Schebella said. “They had the most favorable terms, are highly responsive and easy to work with, and gave us a level of optionality that simply doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Espresso Capital provides non-dilutive growth capital and bridge financing solutions to North American companies in technology, healthcare and other verticals.
