i.am+

About i.am+

Founded in 2012 by musician and entrepreneur will.i.am, i.am+ (also known as I.AM. Plus Electronics) began with a mission to blend fashion and technology in consumer electronics. An early venture for the company was a camera accessory for the iPhone 4, followed by a series of fashion-conscious wearable technology products. This initial focus on hardware included the "BUTTONS" and "EPs" high-end Bluetooth headphones, which were sold through retailers like Apple, and the "dial," a SIM-enabled smartwatch with its own conversational AI called AneedA.

The company's trajectory pivoted significantly towards enterprise artificial intelligence solutions. This shift was accelerated by the 2016 acquisition of Israeli machine learning firm Sensiya, which was rebranded as over.ai to advance the company's natural language understanding capabilities. In 2017, i.am+ made another strategic purchase, acquiring smart home hub manufacturer Wink from Flex for $38.7 million, signaling a deeper push into connected device ecosystems. This period of expansion was supported by substantial funding, including an $89 million round in March 2017 from investors such as Salesforce Ventures, bringing the company's total funding to over $123 million.

The core of the business became the Omega platform, a device-agnostic, AI-powered voice assistant designed for the enterprise market. Unveiled in 2017, Omega was developed to provide a more contextual and conversational customer experience, moving beyond simple voice commands to handle complex, multi-step tasks. The platform was engineered to serve various industries, including retail, automotive, and telecommunications, by offering voice, text, and other customer interaction tools. A key partnership was formed with Deutsche Telekom, which used Omega to power an AI customer support chatbot. Another major collaboration with Majid Al Futtaim aimed to introduce Omega's capabilities in both English and Arabic to customers of Carrefour and VOX Cinemas in the Middle East, marking a significant international rollout.

will.i.am's background as a founding shareholder in Beats Electronics, which was sold to Apple, provided him with experience in the consumer electronics space. His vision for i.am+ was to create a community of creatives and coders and to leverage AI to influence pop culture, starting at the intersection of music and technology. The company was also co-founded by Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, who was involved in demonstrating the Omega platform.