Former Nutanix Founder’s AI Unicorn is Changing the World of CRM and Product Development

DevRev, founded by former Nutanix co-founder Dheeraj Pandey and former SVP of engineering at the company, Manoj Agarwal, is an AI-native platform unifying customer support and product development. It recently achieved unicorn status with a $100.8 million series A funding round, bringing its valuation to $1.15 billion.

Backed by major investors, such as Khosla Ventures, Mayfield Fund, and Param Hansa Values, the company is on the road to proving the ‘AI bubble’ conversation wrong. “Right now, there’s a lot of talk in the industry about AI and machine learning, but what we’re doing at DevRev isn’t something that can be easily replicated,” said Agarwal in an exclusive interview with AIM.

Agarwal emphasised the unique challenge of integrating AI into existing workflows, a problem that DevRev is tackling head-on. Databricks recently announced that LakeFlow Connect would be available for public preview for SQL Server, Salesforce, and Workday; DevRev is on a similar journey, but with AI at its core, it remains irreplaceable.

DevRev’s AgentOS platform is built around a powerful knowledge graph, which organises data from various sources—such as customer support, product development, and internal communications—into a single, unified system with automatic RAG pipelines. 

This allows users to visualise and interact with the data from multiple perspectives, whether they are looking at it from the product side, the customer side, or the people side.

The Knowledge Graph Approach

Machines don’t understand the boundaries between departments. The more data you provide, the better they perform. “Could you really bring the data into one system, and could you arrange this data in a way that people can visually do well?” asked Agarwal. 

The Knowledge Graph does precisely that – offering a comprehensive view of an organisation’s data, which can then be leveraged for search, analytics, and workflow automation.

Agarwal describes the DevRev platform as being built on three foundational pillars: advanced search capabilities, seamless workflow automation, and robust analytics and reporting tools. “Search, not just keyword-based search, but also semantic search,” he noted.

On top of these foundational elements, DevRev has developed a suite of applications tailored to specific use cases, such as customer support, software development, and product management. These apps are designed to work seamlessly with the platform’s AI agents, which can be programmed to perform end-to-end tasks, further enhancing productivity.

“The AI knowledge graph is the hardest thing to get right,” admitted Agarwal, pointing to the challenges of syncing data from multiple systems and keeping it updated in real-time. However, DevRev has managed to overcome these hurdles, enabling organisations to bring their data into a single platform where it can be organised, analysed, and acted upon.

The Open Approach

The company’s focus on AI is not new. In fact, DevRev’s journey began in 2020, long before the current wave of AI hype. “In 2020, when we wrote our first paper about DevRev, it had GPT all over it,” Agarwal recalls, referring to the early adoption of AI within the company. 

Even today, DevRev primarily uses OpenAI’s enterprise version but also works closely with other AI providers like AWS and Anthropic. In 2021, the platform organised a hackathon where OpenAI provided exclusive access to GPT-3 for all the participants. 

This forward-thinking approach allowed DevRev to build a tech stack that was ready to leverage the latest advancements in AI, including the use of vector databases, which were not widely available at the time.

One of the biggest challenges that DevRev addresses is the outdated nature of many systems of record in use today. Whether it’s in customer support, CRM, or product management, these legacy systems are often ill-equipped to handle the demands of modern businesses, particularly when it comes to integrating AI and machine learning.

Not a Bubble

DevRev’s architecture is designed with flexibility in mind, allowing enterprises to bring their own AI models or use the company’s built-in solutions. “One of the core philosophies we made from the very beginning is that everything we do inside DevRev will have API webhooks that we expose to the outside world,” Agarwal explained. 

As DevRev reaches its unicorn status, Agarwal acknowledges the growing concerns about an “AI bubble” similar to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. “There’s so many companies that just have a website and a company,” he said, drawing parallels between the two eras. 

However, he believes that while there may be some hype, the underlying technology is real and here to stay. “I don’t think that anybody is saying that after the internet, this thing is not real. This thing is real,” Agarwal asserted. 

The key, he argues, is to distinguish between companies that are merely riding the AI wave and those that are genuinely innovating and solving real problems. DevRev, with its deep investment in AI and its unique approach to integrating it into enterprise workflows, clearly falls into the latter category.