Co-led by Knife Capital and FAM Investments, the funding will accelerate Cue's AI agent development, international growth and investment in voice, security and enterprise integrations.

LONDON / CAPE TOWN: Cue today announced a $5 million primary funding round, co-led by Knife Capital and FAM Investments, to accelerate the development of its AI-powered customer service platform as businesses increasingly adopt autonomous AI to resolve customer issues end-to-end. The funding will support continued product development, international expansion and deeper investment in voice, security and enterprise integrations.

Cue already powers customer conversations for more than 500 companies across the UK and South Africa, spanning automotive, retail, insurance, finance and education. The company grew ARR by more than 160% year on year in its latest financial year and now handles more than 500 million messages and conversations annually across its platform.

Cue is building its second generation of AI agents to resolve customer service issues end to end, from first contact to final action, without requiring human intervention in many cases. When human support is still needed, the platform hands over to Cue's unified inbox and ticketing desk, with full context, for high-value intervention.

The philosophy is automation-first, but never automation only. AI agents handle repetitive, high volume work, giving human agents more time to focus on the complex, the sensitive, and the relationship defining conversations that create real value.

"It's an exciting time of transformation for the company," said Richard Nischk, CEO of Cue. "We're at an inflection point for AI in customer service, and we see more businesses starting to realise that they need a unified platform to succeed, not a patchwork of point solutions."

Where Cue is today

For decades, customer service technology evolved one channel at a time, leaving businesses with fragmented systems for voice, email, messaging and social media. Customers were forced to repeat themselves while service teams switched constantly between disconnected tools. Cue was built to replace that fragmentation with a single platform where autonomous agents and human teams work together.

The promise of agentic AI is straightforward, reduced costs and higher revenue. The catch has been a slow, expensive ramp-up. Cue's mission is to shorten that path, so businesses see the value sooner.

"Rising costs have put support teams under pressure to do more with less," said Nischk. "At the same time, consumers want self-service but are increasingly frustrated by poor automated experiences. Our goal is to help businesses deliver a genuinely great automated experience, while also recognising that escalating to a human is often the right thing to do."

For the first time, the technology is ready. Advances in Frontier AI mean the technology can now reason, decide, and take action, not just respond. Independent benchmarks show leading models resolving the majority of real support tasks autonomously, including multi-step workflows like processing a return or updating an account. The capability is here. What's been missing is a complete platform to deploy it safely, across every channel, at scale. That is exactly what Cue is building.

Cue Agents: from answering to resolving

Today, Cue's first generation agents can already resolve over 60% of customer conversations autonomously. The next iteration will enable the secure execution of complex tasks across different systems, such as qualifying leads and adding them to CRMs, checking order status, booking appointments, handling student applications, and sending payment links or anything more.

Cue is building the infrastructure to let AI agents handle complex tasks and resolve customer queries across systems securely.

"Customer service remains the lifeblood of every enduring business. As AI reshapes enterprise software, the winners will be companies that enhance human capability rather than replace it. Cue has built a platform that delivers measurable value today, led by a team with the vision, technical depth and execution ability to be a category leader. That's exactly the type of business Knife Capital looks to back," said Keet van Zyl, Founding Partner at Knife Capital.

Where this funding takes Cue

"Our growth strategy reflects exactly what our clients are asking for: an all-in-one AI powered customer service platform that delivers value and best in class service, across every channel," said Nischk.

The $5 million will accelerate three priorities:

• Engineering: Cue's next wave of autonomous AI agents, deeper voice infrastructure, stronger security, and a broader platform.

• Go-to-market: Scaling sales and marketing across the UK and South Africa as Cue moves into new verticals and international markets.

• Product: More channels, additional agent actions, deeper integrations and advanced analytics.

The future of customer service

Customer service will look dramatically different in the coming years, this is a moment of disruption, and Cue is building the platform to help businesses manage this transition effectively and securely.

About Cue

Founded in 2015, Cue is an AI-powered customer service platform building autonomous AI agents that resolve customer issues end-to-end across WhatsApp, webchat, email, Messenger, USSD, SMS and voice. Cue powers customer conversations for more than 500 companies and brands across the UK and South Africa. Learn more at cuedesk.com