Chinese artificial intelligence company Whobot, which develops AI voice agents for enterprise clients, has raised Series A funding in the eight-figure RMB range. GSR Ventures led the round, with Xiangyang Capital Management serving as the financial advisor. The funds will be used for technology development and market expansion, according to the company.
Founded in 2023, Whobot describes itself as a digital employee platform designed for enterprise communication. It uses proprietary large language models, voice interaction systems, and real-time operating systems to build AI agents that integrate conversational and task-execution capabilities, aiming to improve lead conversion efficiency for its clients.
In the year since launching its first product, Whobot has grown to a 13-person team and said it has signed more than 100 clients. The company reported a 100% renewal rate among paying users.
Whobot’s platform sets itself apart from traditional call centers and enterprise software by reducing labor costs, operating continuously, and adapting to specific business needs. Its AI agents handle lead qualification, customer engagement via WeChat, product sales, hotline response, and customer service.
Founder Dong Lianping characterized Whobot’s key differentiator in one word: humanlike.
Speed and accuracy are strengths of AI, but meaningful communication is shaped by tone, word choice, and context, Dong said in an interview with 36Kr. “Whobot’s AI voice agents are trained to simulate real-time, interactive behavior, like talking while taking action,” he said.
He illustrated this with a scenario: if a user cuts a call short because of a meeting, a basic AI agent might call back too soon and repeat its message. Whobot’s system, by contrast, records the exchange, waits for an appropriate window, and resumes the conversation with a more natural opener like, “Hi, I called you earlier…”
Flat intonation, canned scripts, and poorly timed callbacks are dead giveaways that the speaker is an AI. “People can tell right away when they are not talking to a person,” Dong said. “And when that happens, they feel disrespected.”
Whobot addresses this by combining dialogue modeling with a multimodal decision engine. Its agents can now manage conversations that are reportedly up to three times longer than earlier versions. They are trained to insert pauses, use filler words, adjust their tone, and react to interruptions or hesitation.
The company said internal data shows 65% of users mistake its AI for human customer service.
A key part of this realism comes from training data. Whobot has developed more than 100 proprietary corpora based on real scripts from top-performing sales agents. These datasets allow its AI to learn new industry scenarios rapidly.
“Anywhere there’s a phone-based job, Whobot can fill it,” Dong said.
So far, the company has worked in sectors including education, automotive, customer service, and telecommunications. In one telecom project, Whobot completed 1,000 conversions for RMB 30,000 (USD 4,200), about one-tenth the cost of a human team.
Another standout feature is multitasking. Traditional AI phone bots often stop after qualifying leads or sending follow-ups. Whobot’s agents, by contrast, can perform operations mid-call.
For example, in education campaigns, getting users to add service reps on WeChat is key to conversion. Text-based prompts can lead to user dropoff. Whobot’s agents initiate the WeChat friend request during the call, either adding the user directly or prompting them to add the rep.
In trials for RMB 19.9 (USD 2.8) demo classes, Whobot reported a conversion rate of up to 95%, compared to 87% for human agents.
Dong also noted applications in fraud prevention. During lead generation campaigns, the system tracks user behavior to flag dropped deals or suspicious activity.
Whobot’s founding team brings experience from major Chinese internet firms. Dong was previously a senior executive at edtech company Zuoyebang and held technical leadership roles at Baidu. CTO Liang Bin has nearly 20 years of engineering experience, including senior positions at Alibaba Cloud and Baidu.
“Whobot delivers productivity, not control,” Dong said. He sees the company’s value not in replacing people, but in redefining service workflows. By taking over repetitive, high-volume tasks, the AI allows human employees to focus on work that requires creativity and judgment.
KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Zhong Yixuan for 36Kr.