whoelse.ai is currently raising at a $7 million valuation with a 10% discount. This amount is attractive when compared to other startups currently raising capital online. However, whoelse.ai has no revenue yet, so the valuation-to-revenue multiple is a detriment in this round. Balancing these factors together, whoselse.ai’s price score is above average.

The company was founded outside of America and plans to go after the European market before expanding into an international company. whoelse.ai is working with MSG Securities to get help with this future expansion.

The global intelligent virtual assistant market was valued at $3.44 billion in 2019 but is expected to grow at a CAGR of 37.7%, up to $44.25 billion by 2027. The largest market is North America, making up 40% of the revenue in this space, but the Asia-Pacific region has the largest estimated CAGR, 40.9% from now until 2027. Similarly, the global market for voice and speech recognition was valued at $9.12 billion in 2017 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 17.2% until 2025. While neither of these markets are particularly large, their rapid growth indicates that new market opportunities will be arising in the coming years. Due to this, the market score for whoelse.ai is quite strong.

whoelse.ai was founded by Tobias Martens and Sven Krueger.  Martens has spent more than eight years working in startup, consulting, and government positions. He graduated from the City University of Applied Sciences in Bremen, Germany with a BA in business administration and european studies. According to his LinkedIn, he currently still works as a lecturer at a German university and at a Berlin startup he founded, Basic Income Machine.

Krueger brings years of marketing and business development experience to whoelse.ai. He spent 13 years in various marketing positions at T-Systems International GmbH, an IT services and consulting company. More recently, he has worked as a freelance digital advisor and as managing partner at Connected Leadership GmbH. He holds an MA degree in art history from the University of Berlin.

Both co-founders are joined by an impressive team of advisors, including Katrin Ohlmer, who has long experience working in the internet and consulting fields. She is the founder and CEO of Germany-based, top-level domain consulting company, DOTZON. Also on the advisor team is Julien Fredonie, who heads strategic venture partnerships at Honda Research Institute Europe GmbH. The rest of the advisory team is well rounded out with diverse backgrounds, including representation from the technology M&A field (Riad Hartani), marketing (Andrea Rumler), and computer science (Dagmar Monett).

For a company that is focused on AI and providing platform-as-a-service features, the lack of technology experience between Martens and Krueger is worrying. However, this is partially balanced by Marten’s previous entrepreneurial endeavors. Kreuger’s marketing expertise could also aid whoelse.ai in acquiring new customers and building brand recognition. Thus, the team score for the company is middle-of-the-road.

The product that whoelse.ai intends to bring to the market is very unique in concept, but whether or not it will be useful in the long run remains questionable. whoelse.ai intends to operate as a backup for an AI program that doesn’t have the ability to answer a certain phrase. For example, instead of Siri coming up with the response “I’m not sure I understand” when given a phrase that it cannot process, it would utilize whoelse.ai’s database of hundreds of different AIs to see if any of other programs could process the user’s request. This functionality is unique in the current AI market and would give the company a unique niche. However, it is important to remember that whoelse.ai is still pre-product. 

Assuming that whoelse.ai is able to fully deliver the features and platform that it has promised, it will have created a very distinct product. It is encouraging that the company has already managed to secure patents for its technology. As a result, whoelse.ai’s differentiators score is its highest across all five metrics.

whoelse.ai’s traction thus far has been minimal. Its product has currently not launched in any real capacity, with an intended launch in Q4 of 2021. Thus far in whoelse.ai’s existence, it has been entirely funded by personal savings, with no notable venture capitalists (VCs) providing prior funding. Due to the lack of any financial performance thus far, the company’s performance score is very low.

whoelse.ai does have areas in which there is reason to point out possible risk to would-be investors. Most notably, the company is still far away from profitability, and more than that, still far away from even having a purchasable product. The product is set to launch late in 2021, but the full voice AI marketplace is still 18-36 months off. It’s unclear if whoelse.ai will be able to deliver on its promises or if it will see ample demand for its product once it has launched. Another key risk with the company is funding. whoelse.ai has been entirely bootstrapped thus far. If it is unable to raise enough capital, the company could struggle to continue operations.

The space of artificial intelligence is set to grow rapidly, but so is the competition. Some of the largest companies in the world (based on market capitalization) have been steadily investing more and more capital into the space of AI. As their products continue to improve in functionality, the need for whoelse.ai’s platform lessens. Given that whoelse.ai’s product isn’t set to be fully launched for potentially another 36 months, its ability to provide a needed AI service may be eclipsed by another competitor. This would limit the company’s profitability considerably. This lack of profitability could then lead to larger financial troubles, given that the founders have provided all the capital thus far. The longer whoelse.ai goes without revenue to offset its cash burn, the quicker it moves towards failure.

Artificial intelligence is growing into a huge market. whoelse.ai’s product has the potential to benefit all kinds of AI assistants, improving their functionality. If whoelse.ai’s product improves performance and allows for AIs to answer previously unanswerable questions, the opportunity for an exit would be large. In fact, the co-founders have already given thought to potential exit strategies. They list providers of AI technologies such as IBM or SAP, media entertainment groups like Spotify or Netflix, companies making consumer electronics like Sony, or e-commerce companies like Walmart as possibilities. If the company can deliver its potentially innovative product, it could be well-positioned to provide a lucrative exit to investors.

whoelse.ai’s mission is to improve the functionality of AIs everywhere. The product that the company envisions has the potential to be helpful to many companies in improving their AI capabilities, but there is no guarantee that these companies won’t invest in improvements internally or acquire companies with different solutions. The executive team of whoelse.ai has little technological experience, but there is a solid team of advisors backing the project. The founding team has also financed the whole company themselves thus far, with no help from VCs. whoelse.ai has seen no profits and no revenues, and its product is potentially years away from completion. Due to all these reasons, whoelse.ai has been rated a Neutral Deal at this time.

For questions regarding the KingsCrowd staff pick or ratings for this company, please reach out to support@kingscrowd.com.

Analysis written by Ethan Thomas.