COGITO
Founders: Josh Feast & Sandy Pentland
Headquarters: Boston, MA
Year Founded: 2007
Year Romulus Invested: 2015
Developed at the MIT Media Lab, Cogito’s behavioral analytics software provides real-time emotional intelligence for sales, service, and care management professionals. Cogito’s product—driven by a combination of behavioral science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning—helps some of the most successful and impactful companies in the world improve sales results, deliver amazing customer experiences, and enhance quality of care.
The Cogito-Romulus story:
We first heard about Cogito many years before we invested, on a flight to Washington, DC in which Krishna sat next to Ali, the CTO. That initial conversation led Krishna to connect with Cogito each subsequent year and trade notes on strategy. “I kept bugging Josh, as I was immediately convinced that Cogito’s approach to and expertise in behavioral analysis of voice would lead to big things—even if we didn’t initially know exactly what those ‘big things’ might be,” says Krishna. Eventually, the stars aligned, and we partnered with Cogito to build what has become one of the world’s leading AI companies.
Romulus value in action: Global. Cogito spun out of MIT with the vision of combining machine learning and behavioral science; it was well ahead of its time in productizing human-augmenting AI. As its core technology sees increasing adoption, the company continues to execute against its global vision.