Johannesburg/London based customer service platform Cue has raised $5m in a primary funding round co-led by venture capital firm Knife Capital and FAM Investments, as it accelerates work on autonomous AI agents that can resolve customer inquiries from start to finish without human intervention.
The company, which operates in both South Africa and the UK, will use the capital to develop a second generation of AI agents, deepen its voice and security infrastructure, build out enterprise integrations and expand its sales and marketing teams across its two core markets.
Cue’s platform already serves more than 500 companies across sectors including automotive, retail, insurance, finance and education. It handles over 500mn messages and conversations a year and reported annual recurring revenue growth of more than 160 per cent in its most recent financial year. Its existing AI agents can resolve more than 60 per cent of customer conversations autonomously, according to the company, with the remainder handed off to a unified human inbox that retains full context.
“We’re at an inflection point for AI in customer service, and we see more businesses starting to realise that they need a unified platform to succeed, not a patchwork of point solutions,” said Richard Nischk, chief executive. Nischk said the company’s philosophy was “automation-first, but never automation only”, with AI handling high-volume, repetitive work while human agents focused on complex, sensitive or relationship-defining conversations.
For years, customer service technology evolved in channel silos — voice, email, messaging, social media — forcing customers to repeat information and agents to toggle between disconnected tools. Cue pitches its platform as a replacement for that fragmentation, combining autonomous agents and a human ticketing desk in a single interface.
The investment arrives as advances in large language models have given AI the ability not just to respond, but to reason, make decisions and take actions. The company pointed to independent benchmarks indicating that leading models can now resolve the majority of routine support tasks without human help, including multi-step workflows such as processing a return or updating an account. Cue is building the infrastructure to deploy those capabilities securely across every customer channel.
“Customer service remains the lifeblood of every enduring business,” said Keet van Zyl, founding partner at Knife Capital. “As AI reshapes enterprise software, the winners will be companies that enhance human capability rather than replace it. Cue has built a platform that delivers measurable value today, led by a team with the vision, technical depth and execution ability to be a category leader. That’s exactly the type of business Knife Capital looks to back.”
The fresh funding will be directed at three areas: engineering Cue’s next wave of autonomous agents, strengthening its go-to-market presence in the UK and South Africa, and broadening the platform with more channels, deeper integrations and advanced analytics. Nischk said the growth strategy reflected direct client demand for “an all-in-one AI powered customer service platform that delivers value and best-in-class service, across every channel.”
The customer service software market has been swept by a wave of AI adoption, with incumbents such as Zendesk and Salesforce embedding large language models and start-ups including Intercom and Ada adding generative AI features. Cue’s focus on end-to-end autonomous resolution places it in an emerging category of agentic platforms that aim to complete tasks — qualifying leads, booking appointments, sending payment links — rather than merely deflecting questions.
The company did not disclose its valuation or any changes to its board. FAM Investments did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The round signals continued investor appetite for African enterprise software start-ups, even as overall tech funding on the continent has stabilised at levels below the 2022 peak.