Chorus.ai acquired by ZoomInfo for $575M
This week we announced the close of Chorus.ai’s first act as we join forces with ZoomInfo. I’ve known Henry Schuck, ZoomInfo board member Ashley Evans and the ZoomInfo team for years and have been inspired and humbled by their vision, customer focus, culture, and execution. Henry’s blog post explains why this is so exciting.
Thank you to all that reached out with kind words. If you texted my old US number, please email me!
Chorus.ai started as a crazy idea 6 years ago that businesses would want to understand and improve their increasingly online conversations. In the years since, our team built the #3 highest rated Software product on G2. We’ve helped support the growth of hundreds of iconic companies like Zoom, DocuSign and GitLab.
I need to thank a few people as the dust is settling. First, my wife Claudia for her unwavering support and encouragement. Hamutal Meridor, who introduced me to Micha Breakstone on one of my many trips to Israel to find the perfect co-founder for a voice-based NLP startup. Micha is one of the most impressive, empathetic and people centric leaders I’ve worked with. Beyond his formal credentials in speech and NLP, his ability to inspire great people to join and excel as a team is unparallel.
Russell Levy wrote every line of Chorus’ original code base and is the most impressive technical mind I’ve ever known. In the early days, he single-handedly built the technology demo that showed investors and early customers that it is possible to analyze conversations in real-time. Over the next 6 years he had a hand in solving countless technological and scaling challenges. Russell also has one of the best understandings of our users, customers and market, and was the person I could turn to during difficult moments. Chorus wouldn’t have been Chorus without him and the endless patience and support of his wife, Miriam.
Dominik Facher led Product for the last 5 years. I can't imagine us being here without his leadership, contributions and counsel.
I’d also like to thank all of our earliest investors and their teams. Specifically our Board Members Gordon Ritter, Santi Subotovsky, Tomasz Tunguz, Simon Chong and Greg Holmes. Each of you immediately saw the multi-billion dollar potential of Conversation Intelligence, supported me and Chorus unwaveringly through the ups and inevitable downs as we defined and created a new category. I feel privileged to have shared this journey with you and learn from your experience.
Thank you to each of you that bet on us and the early Chorus product (AffectLayer!) so we could learn and navigate the fog of the early days, and to the hundreds of customers and thousands of users that inspired and challenged us to build the best product in the space.
Thank you to each of our employees past and present. This product and outcome is the culmination of your ingenuity, creativity, teamwork and grit. Getting to know you all and working with you was the highlight of this journey for me.
Last but not least, thank you Jim Benton and the Chorus Executive Team (Thiago Sá Freire, Natalie Severino, Persha Valman, Sam Kramer) for their incredible teamwork scaling the business.