{"id":120581,"date":"2021-03-15T19:22:19","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T02:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/sherpa-raises-8-5m-to-expand-from-conversational-ai-to-b2b-privacy-first-federated-learning-services"},"modified":"2021-03-15T19:22:19","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T02:22:19","slug":"sherpa-raises-8-5m-to-expand-from-conversational-ai-to-b2b-privacy-first-federated-learning-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/sherpa-raises-8-5m-to-expand-from-conversational-ai-to-b2b-privacy-first-federated-learning-services","title":{"rendered":"Sherpa raises $8.5M to expand from conversational AI to B2B privacy-first federated learning services"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/sherpa-raises-8-5m-to-expand-from-conversational-ai-to-b2b-privacy-first-federated-learning-services.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sherpa.ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sherpa<\/a>, a startup from Bilbao, Spain that was an early mover in building a voice-based digital assistant and predictive search for Spanish-speaking audiences, has raised some more funding to double down on a newer focus for the startup: building out privacy-first AI services for enterprise customers.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/E65xMrrqwFM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The company has closed $8.5 million, funding that Xabi Uribe-Etxebarria, Sherpa\u2019s founder and CEO, said it will be using to continue building out a privacy-focused machine learning platform based on a federated learning model alongside its existing conversational AI and search services. Early users of the service have included the Spanish public health services, which were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=E65xMrrqwFM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">using the platform to analyse information about COVID-19 cases<\/a> to predict demand and capacity in emergency rooms around the country.<\/p>\n<p>The funding is coming from Marcelo Gigliani, a managing partner at Apax Digital; Alex Cruz, the chairman of British Airways; and Spanish investment firms Mundi Ventures and Ekarpen. The funding is an extension to the $15 million Sherpa has already raised in a <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2019\/01\/23\/sherpa-a-spanish-voice-assistant-expands-series-a-to-15m-as-it-passes-5m-users\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Series A<\/a>. From what I understand, Sherpa is currently also raising a larger Series B.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sherpa, a startup from Bilbao, Spain that was an early mover in building a voice-based digital assistant and predictive search for Spanish-speaking audiences, has raised some more funding to double down on a newer focus for the startup: building out privacy-first AI services for enterprise customers. The company has closed $8.5 million, funding that Xabi [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}