Respond.io Raises $62.5 Million Series B Led by Camber Partners to Bring AI‑Native Customer Conversation Platform to North America and Europe

Kuala Lumpur‑based customer conversation management platform respond.io has raised $62.5 million in a Series B round led by New York‑based growth equity firm Camber Partners, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst and existing investors. The announcement was made on June 16, 2026, and follows a $7 million Series A raised in 2022, making this a jump of nearly nine times the company's previous raise in a single round.

The new capital will fund expansion into North America and Europe, including selective mergers and acquisitions that the company has flagged as part of its geographic growth strategy.

Nine Years of Building Before a Growth Round

Respond.io was founded in 2017 by Gerardo Salandra, who had previously worked at IBM and Google before joining Runtastic, the fitness tracking app sold to Adidas in 2015. He founded respond.io in Hong Kong alongside co‑founders Hassan Ahmed, who serves as CTO, and Iaroslav Kudritskiy, who serves as COO. The team relocated the business to Malaysia two years after founding, establishing Kuala Lumpur as the company's permanent headquarters.

The nine‑year gap between founding and a meaningful external growth round is unusual in a sector that typically attracts Series B capital within three to five years. It reflects a deliberate choice. Respond.io spent its first years building platform infrastructure across markets that most Western venture firms were not closely watching: Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia, where WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, and WeChat are the primary customer communication channels, not email or web chat.

That geographic and channel focus forced the company to solve problems that businesses in North America and Europe are only now beginning to encounter. When a customer contacts a brand through WhatsApp, the conversation has fundamentally different expectations than a web chat widget. It is personal, asynchronous, persistent, and often the preferred communication channel for high‑consideration purchases. Managing those conversations at scale, routing them correctly, automating the repetitive parts, and ensuring that agents can handle the rest, requires infrastructure that does not exist in conventional CRM or helpdesk software.

What the Platform Does

Respond.io unifies 20 messaging channels into a single platform. WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Messenger, LINE, Telegram, WeChat, voice calls, email, and web chat are all consolidated into one inbox, with AI agents, automation workflows, and CRM integrations layered on top. The platform is designed for mid‑market business‑to‑consumer companies in sectors where customers initiate contact before making a decision: education, healthcare, automotive, retail, and travel.

The use case is conversational commerce at volume. When a potential student in Malaysia wants to enquire about a university course, they open WhatsApp. When a car buyer in Indonesia wants to follow up on a test drive, they message on LINE. When a hotel guest in the Philippines has a complaint, it arrives on Messenger. For businesses operating across Southeast Asia and other messaging‑first markets, the volume of incoming conversations is high, the channels are fragmented, and the stakes of failing to respond promptly are significant. Respond.io is the infrastructure layer that makes managing all of that possible from a single interface.

The AI layer has expanded significantly as the underlying models have improved. The platform now supports AI agents capable of handling high volumes of customer conversations autonomously, routing complex queries to human agents, and providing the CRM context agents need to respond effectively. Salandra has described the shift from omnichannel inbox to native AI infrastructure as the company's key evolution over the past two years, moving from a platform that organised incoming conversations to one that actively participates in them.

The Financial Case for This Round

The metrics that attracted Camber Partners are among the strongest disclosed by any Southeast Asian SaaS company at this stage. Respond.io generates $35 million in annual recurring revenue, growing at 169 percent year‑on‑year. It operates at a 30 percent profit margin. The platform maintains 99.999 percent uptime and processes two billion messages per quarter for more than 10,000 businesses across 180 countries and territories.

The customer list spans some of the world's largest brands: Toyota, British Airways, Radisson, Hertz, and Decathlon. Those logos represent enterprise adoption at a scale that most customer communication platforms do not reach until Series C or later. The combination of $35 million in ARR, 169 percent growth, and positive operating margins makes respond.io one of the rare capital‑efficient software businesses that raises to accelerate rather than to fund losses.

That profile is precisely what Camber Partners was looking for. The firm, which has a pre‑fund portfolio that includes Dropbox, PandaDoc, and Pipedrive, invests in only a handful of capital‑efficient software businesses per year and offers deep operational engagement across go‑to‑market strategy, data science, and talent. Scott Irwin, founder and partner at Camber, described respond.io as having spent nine years building the infrastructure for high‑consideration, AI‑native customer conversations and doing it profitably in diverse markets. He said the firm believes respond.io is positioned to lead this category at a global scale.

Salandra's framing of the raise was equally direct: the company raised to accelerate, not to survive.

North America, Europe, and the Acquisition Strategy

The two markets respond.io is now targeting are structurally different from its existing base. North America and Europe are more mature in terms of enterprise software adoption, but they are catching up rapidly in messaging channel usage. WhatsApp's penetration in Europe has reached levels that make it a primary customer communication channel for many businesses, particularly in Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. In North America, SMS and iMessage commerce has grown significantly, and the demand for AI‑native conversation management that can span channels at scale is increasing.

The company has also flagged a willingness to make acquisitions as part of the expansion strategy, a signal that respond.io is not simply planning organic market entry but is actively looking for complementary platforms, team‑based acquisitions, or distribution partnerships that can accelerate its presence in the new geographies.

Key facts about the round and company:

• Series B: $62.5 million, announced June 16, 2026
• Lead investor: Camber Partners (New York)
• Other investors: Endeavor Catalyst, existing backers
• Previous funding: $7 million Series A (2022)
• Annual recurring revenue: $35 million, growing 169% year‑on‑year
• Operating margin: 30%
• Messages processed: 2 billion per quarter
• Customers: more than 10,000 businesses in 180 countries
• Notable customers: Toyota, British Airways, Radisson, Hertz, Decathlon
• Founded: 2017, by Gerardo Salandra, Hassan Ahmed, and Iaroslav Kudritskiy
• Headquarters: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The combination of nine years of profitable operation, $35 million in ARR, 169 percent growth, and a global customer base that includes tier‑one brands gives respond.io a credibility in the North American and European markets that a typical Series B company cannot demonstrate. Whether the company can translate its deep expertise in messaging‑first emerging markets into the more competitive and structurally different dynamics of Western enterprise software will define the next chapter of its growth.