Marketing technology firm Invoca has acquired Symbl.ai, a Seattle-based artificial intelligence startup known for its advanced multimodal interaction analysis technology. The acquisition, announced recently, marks a significant step in Invoca’s strategy to enhance its AI-driven capabilities for marketing and customer engagement. Although the companies did not disclose the financial terms, the move aligns with Invoca’s long-term mission to refine revenue generation through intelligent communication analysis.
Symbl.ai, which originally launched under the name Rammer.AI, allows developers to build AI applications capable of analyzing real-time conversations across voice and text. With the integration of Symbl’s capabilities, Invoca plans to deploy AI models that go beyond simple transcription or keyword recognition. Instead, these models will interpret complex conversations, provide emotionally intelligent feedback, and help businesses drive better decision-making in customer interactions.
The Strategic Fit Between Invoca and Symbl.ai
Founded in 2008, Invoca positions itself as a revenue execution platform. The company assists marketing and sales teams in maximizing lead quality, improving call conversions, and understanding customer intent. It uses call tracking and AI tools to help clients increase revenue by refining how they engage with customers on the phone.
On the other hand, Symbl.ai has developed technology that decodes the nuances of human conversations. The platform doesn’t just convert speech into text; it identifies context, sentiment, speaker intent, and even emotion. This makes it a natural fit for Invoca’s product suite.
Invoca CEO Gregg Johnson explained the synergy in a blog post. “We are embedding the agentic capabilities of Symbl.ai across the entire Invoca platform, giving you the ability to polish even the most minute sources of friction in your buying journey and thus increase your go-to-market efficiency,” he wrote.
By integrating Symbl’s technology, Invoca will offer more comprehensive analytics to businesses, enabling them to uncover hidden friction points in the sales funnel and refine customer experiences more effectively.
Symbl’s Journey: From Startup to Acquisition
Symbl’s story began in 2018 when co-founders Surbhi Rathore and Toshish Jawale, both former Amdocs employees, set out to solve a fundamental problem in the communications space: understanding conversations at scale. In 2019, their company—then called Rammer.AI—graduated from Techstars Seattle, a milestone that helped it gain visibility and investor traction.
Over the years, Symbl.ai raised $28.5 million in total funding, including a $17 million Series A round in 2021 led by GreatPoint Ventures. The startup attracted other notable investors such as Gutbrain Ventures, Crosscut Ventures, Jump Capital, and Flying Fish.
Symbl focused its efforts on developing AI models that handle the complexity of real-world conversations. Its software could process live voice calls, transcribe them accurately, detect sentiment, identify action items, and provide summaries—functions critical for sales calls, customer service, and technical support.
Now, as part of Invoca, both Rathore and Jawale have taken leadership roles. Rathore serves as VP of AI Products and Strategy, while Jawale leads engineering efforts. Rathore expressed enthusiasm about her new role, saying, “I’m excited for the opportunity to focus on the application layer, given all these years on building the platform.”
The Value of Multimodal AI in Marketing
Invoca’s acquisition reflects a broader trend in marketing technology—the shift toward multimodal and emotionally intelligent AI. Traditional speech analytics systems rely heavily on words and phrases. However, modern communication involves tone, pace, interruptions, and context—all of which influence how messages are received.
Symbl.ai excels in this area. Its models interpret nuances of actual talking, making them especially effective in real-world applications. Matt Diederichs, VP of Strategic Operations at Invoca, highlighted this in a LinkedIn post: “Symbl’s models can surface insights that are emotionally aware, contextually persistent, and immediately useful. Pretty impressive stuff.”
By embedding these models into its platform, Invoca empowers businesses to capture actionable intelligence from every conversation. Marketing teams will gain access to deeper behavioral insights, allowing them to personalize messaging, improve targeting, and optimize the customer journey.
Competitive Advantage Through Emotionally Aware AI
The ability to interpret emotional cues and contextual signals offers a major advantage in today’s hyper-competitive marketing environment. Brands often struggle to understand why a lead didn’t convert or why a conversation fell flat. Symbl’s AI models eliminate this blind spot by flagging subtle friction points—such as hesitation, confusion, or customer dissatisfaction—that might otherwise go unnoticed.
This integration also helps contact centers improve performance. Managers can monitor agent-customer interactions more closely, receive real-time alerts for high-risk calls, and offer coaching based on actual emotional feedback rather than scripted metrics.
The combination of Invoca’s call tracking and conversion analytics with Symbl’s conversation intelligence will provide marketing and customer service teams with a full-stack solution that spans the entire customer engagement lifecycle.
Expanding Use Cases and Future Roadmap
While the primary focus remains on sales and marketing, Invoca will likely extend Symbl’s capabilities to other verticals, including healthcare, financial services, and hospitality—industries where conversations play a critical role in service delivery.
Expect Invoca to roll out new features that enable clients to:
- Automate call scoring based on emotional tone and intent.
- Track sentiment trends over time for individual customers.
- Generate summaries and action items for sales follow-ups.
- Highlight compliance risks in regulated industries.
- Deliver dynamic coaching suggestions for agents in real time.
This shift positions Invoca as not just a martech provider but also as a conversation intelligence leader—one that transforms human interactions into tangible business value.
What This Acquisition Means for the Industry
Invoca’s acquisition of Symbl.ai reflects a growing appetite for vertical AI integration. Rather than build conversational intelligence from scratch, Invoca chose to acquire a startup with proven technology and a mature product.
This strategy mirrors moves by other enterprise tech giants that prioritize embedding AI at the infrastructure level. As AI continues to evolve, companies will compete not just on core capabilities but on how seamlessly they apply AI to solve specific business problems.
Symbl’s success also validates the potential for developer-first AI platforms. By allowing companies to build custom applications on top of its models, Symbl created a flexible framework for innovation. Invoca now gains access to that same flexibility, which it can leverage to customize features across its client base.
Conclusion
Invoca’s acquisition of Symbl.ai marks a major milestone in the evolution of marketing technology. By combining Symbl’s emotionally intelligent AI with Invoca’s revenue execution platform, the company aims to redefine how businesses understand and engage with their customers.
The move strengthens Invoca’s position in the rapidly growing field of conversation intelligence, enabling marketing and sales teams to tap into deeper, more actionable insights. With experienced leadership from Symbl’s founding team and a clear vision for AI-driven engagement, Invoca stands poised to lead the next wave of innovation in human-centered marketing solutions.