Rebecca PY MALAYSIA, 23 JUNE 2026 – A Malaysia-based startup that has spent nine years quietly building one of the world’s most comprehensive customer conversation platforms is now stepping onto the global stage, backed by $62.5 million in fresh capital and a growth trajectory that has caught the attention of some of Silicon Valley’s most selective investors.
Respond.io, headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, announced the close of its Series B round led by Camber Partners, a New York City-based growth equity firm whose pre-fund portfolio includes Dropbox, PandaDoc, and Pipedrive. Endeavor Catalyst, the investment arm backed by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, also participated alongside existing investors.
The raise is notable not just for its size but for the financial profile behind it. Respond.io enters this round generating $35 million in annual recurring revenue, growing at 169% year-over-year, and doing so at a 30% profit margin. In a funding environment where profitability has become a prerequisite rather than a bonus, that combination puts the company in a category occupied by very few venture-backed startups at comparable scale.
The platform itself addresses a problem that has grown more acute as commercial activity has migrated to messaging apps. Businesses serving customers across WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Messenger, LINE, Telegram, WeChat, email, voice calls, and web chat have historically managed each channel in isolation, creating fragmented experiences and invisible revenue opportunities. Respond.io consolidates all of these into a single platform, layering on AI agents, automation, and CRM integrations to turn what most companies treat as a support cost into a measurable revenue channel.
Today, the platform processes 2 billion messages per quarter for more than 10,000 businesses across 180 countries, with clients including Toyota, British Airways, Radisson, Hertz, and Decathlon. Its AI Agents are actively qualifying leads and closing business-to-consumer sales autonomously, with the company citing case studies where AI has handled 600% more leads with conversation rates as high as 84%.
The structural advantage respond.io has built is one that newer entrants will struggle to replicate quickly. Years of running high-volume conversations across diverse markets have generated operational depth and data signals that shape how AI features are built and refined. The company maintains 99.999% uptime, a benchmark that carries significant weight when AI agents are handling revenue-critical conversations at scale. That track record attracted early partnership access from Meta and TikTok for the WhatsApp Business Calling API, TikTok Business Messaging, and TikTok Messaging Ads integrations, making respond.io one of the few platforms with end-to-end coverage across both messaging and calling.
The company built this position from markets that most Western competitors overlooked. Its category leadership across Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and EMEA was established in regions where mobile messaging has long been the primary commercial channel, giving respond.io years of operational experience in the exact workflows that North American and European markets are now beginning to adopt as social commerce on TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp accelerates.
Gerardo Salandra, CEO and co-founder of respond.io, described the fundraise as a decision to accelerate rather than survive, a distinction that reflects the company’s position entering the round from a place of financial strength rather than necessity.
Reid Hoffman echoed that framing, describing respond.io as precisely the kind of company Endeavor Catalyst is proud to support: founders building profitable infrastructure in emerging markets and scaling it into the world’s largest economies.
The capital will be deployed primarily to expand respond.io’s presence in North America and Europe, markets the company believes are approaching the same inflection point in conversation-led commerce that its existing markets reached earlier, and where respond.io arrives with a proven playbook already tested at scale.