Global artificial intelligence chatbot company Cognigy, which has grown its revenue by 828 percent since the close of 2022, is moving its U.S. headquarters from San Francisco to DFW.
Its new digs are right off Dallas North Tollway in Plano at the newly built Parkwood II building. Cognigy signed a lease for 5,000 square feet, but the company has right of first refusal to an additional 20,000 square feet. Cognigy is just the second tenant to move into the second phase of The Parkwood development.
“Dallas offers the perfect mix of innovation, energy, and opportunity,” said Philipp Heltewig, CEO and co-founder of Cognigy. “We’ve built a strong U.S. presence over the past seven years, and relocating our headquarters to Dallas brings us closer to top enterprise customers, a rich talent pool, and a community that shares our forward-looking mindset.”
Cognigy, which launched in 2016, has 300 employees across the globe. In the U.S., it has about 50 employees, and in the next 18 months, the firm is trying to scale that headcount to upwards of 100. Its Dallas office has the space to house 70 employees. Cognigy’s C-Suite is spread across the globe—the company has two offices in Germany, where it was founded, as well as offices in London, Amsterdam, Sydney, Seoul, Tokyo, Dubai, Spain, and San Francisco.
The company’s foundation is built on agentic AI, which is an artificial intelligence system that can act as an agent—meaning the machine can make decisions, set goals, take initiative, and carry out tasks with a degree of autonomy. As opposed to generative AI, which creates content like text or images, Cognigy’s agentic AI customer service chatbot uses that content to think, plan, and act toward a goal on its own.
“San Francisco is good for what it is: the established players,” said Joe Havlik, who runs the Americas business for Cognigy out of Dallas. “But DFW is an emerging tech hub. When I think of the up-and-coming technologies, this is the place to be. About 20 years ago, DFW had the telecom boom, but now it’s playing out in the agentic AI space. DFW is unequivocally a better spot for [growing] an agentic AI company.”
Havlik also cited the local tech talent pipeline that universities are producing as a chief reason for picking North Texas as its new hub. “It’s the University of Dallas, UT-Dallas, SMU, TCU—I could rattle off another 25 universities,” he said. “So, first and foremost is the sheer amount of talent that is based here.
“The pro-business regulations [in Texas] are huge for us, also,” Havlik said. This year, California lawmakers are moving forward with 30 bills to try to regulate how AI is deployed. AI legislation is also being proposed in Texas, but the belief is that it will not be as restrictive as California’s. He also cited North Texas’ airports as another driving factor.
The firm has built agentic AI chatbots for Toyota, Greyhound, Frontier Airlines, Mercedes-Benz, Nestlé, Puma, Adidas, Fabletics, and more. In all, the company boasts more than 1,000 clients, but Havlik believes the tech has rapid growth potential. “If we can take that and double or triple that in the next two to three years, we’ll be right on target with what our plans are, especially with the headcount growth that we’re projecting,” he said.
The company will now look to build on its clientele in North Texas. Havlik’s elevator pitch to potential clients, he said, is simple: “You can only hire so many humans to handle any set of problems, and there’s a cost structure that comes with that. I have an agentic AI solution that never needs a break; it works 24/7, can speak 14 languages, and can handle 80 to 90 percent of your problems. ROIs are typically in the 300 to 400 percent range in the first year.”
Cognigy predicts the Dallas HQ will bring in up to $150 million in revenue within the next three years. Last June, Cognigy raised $100 million in Series C funding, which will sustain the company for the next several years, Havlik said. “With the right valuation, we’re unequivocally open to taking a Series D, whether that be next year or early 2027,” Havlik told D CEO. To date, the company has raised a total of $160 million across all raises.
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Ben Swanger is the managing editor for D CEO, the business title for D Magazine. Ben manages the Dallas 500, monthly…
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