Espresso Capital announced that it has provided Inference Solutions, a global provider of Intelligent Virtual Agents, with a US$8 million credit facility. 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,” says Inference CEO Callan Schebella. “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 its Intelligent Virtual Agents to sales and service organizations to automate routine and repetitive conversations typically handled by live agents over voice, chat, and messaging. The company’s mission is to democratize the conversational AI technologies that are increasingly being used at large enterprises and government agencies. The company was recently recognized as the intelligent virtual agent global market share leader by DMG Consulting.

“We’re excited to partner with Callan and his team at Inference,” says Will Hutchins, Managing Director at Espresso Capital. “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 who led the company’s $12 million Series A round in 2018. “We’ve worked with Espresso before and liked their flexible approach to funding fast-growing companies. 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,” says Phil Dur, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at PeakSpan.

For Schebella and his team, the experience working with Espresso has been a great one so far. “Not only did Espresso come highly recommended from our board, they are also truly unique,” he says. “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.”