Jibo, the company operating at the intersection of artificial intelligence and the automated home via its eponymous family-friendly robot, said it has raised a whopping $25.3 million in its latest round of financing.

Jibo’s been touted as the family-friendly face of robotics since its launch last year with a massive media blitz and a hugely successful Indiegogo campaign.

The company’s latest money (a Series A round for those of you who care) was led by RRE Ventures and included the lead seed investor CRV. Additional investments came from previous investors Fairhaven and Osage University Partners alongside new investors Flybridge Capital Partners, Two Sigma Ventures, Formation 8, Samsung Ventures and several angels.

According to a statement, Jibo will use the financing to fulfill orders on its Indiegogo campaign, which has seen the company take in 4,800 orders for its little robot; as well as aggressively hire more staff, develop new prototypes, and encourage a developer community to create new apps for the company’s first product (still little more than a dream in its founders’ eye).

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Steve Chambers says he first heard about the “social robotics” startup Jibo in late 2013, when two friends mentioned the startup to him within two hours on the same day. At the time, Chambers was running worldwide sales, marketing, and business development for Nuance, the publicly held speech recognition company in Burlington. Chambers says he couldn’t leave that post immediately, but he joined Jibo’s board last September as executive chairman, and helped founder Cynthia Breazeal raise $25 million in new funding.

Today, the Weston company is announcing that Chambers, a veteran of both the speech recognition and videoconferencing industries, is joining Jibo as its new CEO.

Breazeal, who took a leave from her MIT professorship to build the company and had been serving as CEO, is shifting to the role of chief scientist.

Jibo emerged from stealth mode last year to launch a crowdfunding campaign for a countertop “family robot” that will be able to coordinate schedules, initiate video chats, relay messages, tell bedtime stories, and snap family photos. That campaign raised $2.3 million from early adopters eager to get their hands on the ‘bot, which was initially priced in the $499 to $599 range.

stevechambersNuance has developed speech recognition systems deployed in Ford cars and Apple iPhones, as well as the Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation software. Chambers had been president of sales and marketing at the company, and before that had been chief marketing officer at SpeechWorks International (a Boston company that Nuance acquired) and PictureTel, a pioneering videoconferencing company that was bought by Polycom in 2001.

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Jibo, the Weston-based startup developing the “first family robot” of the same name, has raised $25.3 million in Series A funding to turn the robot into a commercial reality.

Meanwhile, the company’s founder and CEO, MIT Media Lab professor and roboticist Cynthia Breazeal, has moved into the role of chief scientist with Jibo. The new CEO at Jibo is Steve Chambers, formerly the president of the sales and marketing division at Burlington-based speech technology firm Nuance Communications. In a news release, Chambers said he is “dedicated to making Jibo a household name.”

The new funding, led by RRE Ventures, will be used to help fulfill the company’s $2.3 million Indiegogo campaign; hire new staff; and speed the development of advanced Jibo prototypes.

Also taking part were returning backers Fairhaven Capital and CRV, who were the seed investors in Jibo. Those firms contributed an initial round to Jibo that was disclosed last June, prior to the start of the successful IndieGogo campaign.

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After colonizing millions of pockets and purses with smartphones, the tech industry is finally making serious inroads to the home with interactive speakers, smart thermostats, networked camera systems, and—maybe soon—helpful little robots.

That last one is the specialty of Jibo, a Boston-area company started by MIT Media Lab professor Cynthia Breazeal. The company’s eponymous robot is still being built, but its appeal as a swiveling, listening, talking countertop assistant was enough to land the company $2.3 million in crowdfunded pre-orders from about 5,000 supporters.

Now, Jibo has taken two major steps to help it fulfill that promise: hiring a new CEO and rounding up $25.3 million in venture investment led by RRE Ventures.

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Jibo, which develops a connected, consumer robot for the home, announced it has raised $25.3 million in Series A funding. RRE Ventures led the round, with participation from CRV, Flybridge Capital Partners, Fairhaven Capital Partners, Two Sigma, Formation 8, Samsung Ventures, Osage Venture Partners and individual investors. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company had previously raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding, led by CRV.

Jibo held a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo from mid-July to mid-September last year in which it pre-sold 4,800 units and raised $2.8 million. The product acts like a smart assistant, reminding users of tasks and interacting with the household. The company, which is no longer taking pre-orders, said it is planning to release its product for the consumer in the first quarter of 2016. “We chose to launch on crowdfunding to prove the product, and the seed funding helped to develop the prototype,” said Steve Chambers, CEO of Jibo.

The company was founded in 2012 by Cynthia Breazeal, chief scientist of Jibo and a pioneer in social robotics.

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CrowdTwist, the marketing industry’s pioneer of multichannel loyalty and analytics solutions, today announced Scott Matthews as the company‘s new Chief Executive Officer. The addition of Matthews at the helm of CrowdTwist comes after the successful raise of a Series B in 2014, continued high growth in the business and the expansion of an impressive roster of marquee customers including TOMS, UFC, Pepsi, Nestlé Purina, L’Oréal, and Zumiez, among others. In his role as CEO, Matthews is poised to build on this momentum and introduce more product offerings into the marketplace.

“Engagement and data are the keys to effective personalization—essentially, The Holy Grail for today’s CMO. CrowdTwist’s multichannel loyalty programs are best in class and unlock this information in a way that is non-intrusive and welcomed by the consumer. As more CMOs realize that loyalty marketing has been completely redefined by multichannel engagement, the growth ceiling will remain very high for CrowdTwist,” said Matthews.

Prior to his appointment at CrowdTwist, Matthews served as CEO of WebCollage for four years until the company’s successful exit to Answers.com in 2013, when Matthews then became General Manager of Answers Syndication. In this leadership role, Matthews managed a variety of Answers’ marketing-based SaaS products to help businesses and organizations engage with customers at every interaction point, drive investment decisions from customer insights, and deliver clear and compelling content that powered the customer experience.

At WebCollage, Matthews was elevated by the Board of Directors from VP of Worldwide Sales to CEO in 2009. As CEO, Matthews pivoted WebCollage into new business sectors and directed the creation of new SaaS products and services that helped turn the company into a profitable and growing entity.

Before WebCollage, Matthews held a range of leadership positions in companies large and small, including Oracle—where Matthews ran the NY Financial region and was an early employee at Siebel Systems, Optum, Interworld, and Secure Computing.

“As more and more Fortune 1000 brands turn to loyalty marketing to drive customer engagement, personalization, and sales, Scott possesses the perfect combination of experience with one foot in the marketing world and the other in sales and management,” said Deborah Farrington, CrowdTwist board member and Co-Founder and General Partner at StarVest Partners, which led the latest round of investment in CrowdTwist in June 2014.

“Having engineered growth at every phase of his professional career, we’re confident Scott can capitalize on CrowdTwist’s existing platform and success, and grow the business at scale,” added Fairhaven Capital Partner Rudina Seseri, another CrowdTwist board member who participated in finding Matthews for the role.

Matthews currently lives in Westchester County with his wife and four children. Matthews received his bachelor’s degree from Rochester Institute of Technology and his master’s degree from Pace University’s Lubin School of Business. He enjoys golf and is an enthusiastic supporter of numerous charities including the SPCA.

For interviews and/or headshots of Scott Matthews, please contact Mark Ballard at 212-680-0179. To learn more about CrowdTwist, please visit http://www.crowdtwist.com.

About CrowdTwist
CrowdTwist is an industry-leading provider of comprehensive multichannel loyalty and analytics solutions that drive engagement and incremental spend, leading to better customer data, stronger insight, and more personalized experiences. We are revolutionizing loyalty, helping top brands including Pepsi, Nestlé Purina, L’Oréal, and Zumiez develop a deeper understanding of customers. For more information visit http://www.crowdtwist.com.

When Will We Get a Home R2-D2? It’s Getting Closer

By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER CONNECT
Updated Jan. 9, 2015 3:57 p.m. ET

Robots with social skills have captured imaginations going back decades. But we don’t have anything like a C-3PO from “Star Wars” or Rosie from “The Jetsons” in our homes yet.

That could start to change. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, two pioneers in the field of social robotics said they are ready to begin selling personal robots. Their hope is that getting robots with basic capabilities like motion, video and voice recognition into homes will encourage developers to create the software that will make them feel like part of the family.

Aldebaran, founded by renowned roboticist Bruno Maisonnier, plans to begin selling its walking, talking 23-inch robot Nao to consumers in the next one to two years. Jibo, an 11-inch table-top robot with a swiveling body created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Cynthia Breazeal, will begin shipping to developers late this year and to homes in 2016.

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