Zenzap Raises $44M to Get Frontline Staff Off WhatsApp
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Plenty of businesses run on group chats that nobody in IT ever approved. Zenzap, a private messenger with built-in AI, wants to replace them, and it has raised $44 million from Bessemer, Lightspeed and The Garage to do it. Individual backers include Wix president Nir Zohar and Yoram Tietz, a former GM of EY.
A founder who waited to take outside money
Guy Weiss is not a first-timer. He bootstrapped e-commerce marketing platform StuccoMedia in 2012, sold it to Market Group in 2015 and then spent several years as an investor. He founded Zenzap in 2022 with co-founders Noam Neumann and Jonatan Bien after meeting Bessemer partner Adam Fisher. At first he built the app with his own money and worked out of Bessemer's office, which is a fairly efficient way to keep a future investor informed. Fisher eventually convinced him the company needed venture backing to scale, and this round is Weiss's first outside funding.
The pitch is compliance. “You can't use WhatsApp or iMessage within a workplace with the AI agent on top of it because it doesn't comply with IT,” Weiss said. Zenzap offers a messenger that understands the organization's context while staying inside IT and security rules.
What customers get
- Free tier: group chats, direct messages, task management, calendar and schedule tools, plus AI voice chat and search.
- Paid plans: from $51 a month for up to 20 users, adding voice and video calls, smart task sorting, more file storage, workspace-wide AI search and turning messages into tasks.
- AI agents: workflow automation and transcription of voice notes and calls, billed with credits.
The customer base leans toward hospitality, construction, healthcare and fast food, with names such as FedEx, Dollar General, Taco Bell, Starbucks, Casey's and Regal. Weiss says franchise branches of IHOP and McDonald's coordinate shifts and supplies on the platform, and Bessemer itself uses it for deal flow. The company has about 50 employees across the U.S., Tel Aviv and Europe and plans to hire in product and R&D.