WEBIO & AREA22 TECHNOLOGIES
Love them or loathe them, ‘virtual assistants’ are here to stay. Traditionally encountered as automated phone answering services, virtual assistants are evolving into more sophisticated chatbots, using artificial intelligence for a host of business functions. Demand for virtual assistants based on conversational AI is rapidly growing, as evidenced by Webio (No.2) and Area22 Technologies (No.7).
Founded in 2016 by Cormac O’ Neill (47), Webio is based in Dublin and has offices in San Francisco and Birmingham. O’Neill’s bright idea was why waste time tr ying to call people about overdue payments when you could WhatsApp them instead. It’s more sophisticated than that, but the underlying premise is that people are more prepared to engage digitally rather than go through a s t ressful phone conversation.
Operating company Wingnut Labs Ltd booked a loss of € 100,000 in 2019, bringing accumulated losses to € 1.8m. Trade debtors decreased by more than half year-on-year to
€ 108,000, while year-end liabilities amounted to c.€1.7m.
O’Neill previously co-founded inbound tour operator myguideTravel in 1999, and he headed up the business for four years. The entrepreneur was also deputy CEO at VoiceSage, which provides cloudbased business communications. Webio allotment filings disclose
€ 500,000 investment from Cameo Global, a managed services provider, and a similar amount from taxpayers through Enterprise Ireland.
Area22 Technologies has ambitious aims with its own take on a virtual assistant, which the company claims can provide an “emotionally intelligent, personality-driven experience”. Use case examples on Area22’s sparse website include mobile operators who use the product for bill payment queries, call services and other functions. Company activities through 2019 were funded by a € 1.7m long-term loan, and the net deficit at year-end was € 1.3m.
The main shareholder is Gavin Bourke (42), while former The Now Factory executive Kenneth Jackson is CEO. The company has trading relationships with a number of companies associated with Tom Morrisroe, a founder of The Now Factory who made millions when the venture was acquired by IBM in 2013.