Israeli startup acquired by AI giant

Sana, an artificial intelligence company, has announced the acquisition of Ctrl, a startup that developed and manages an AI-based platform for sales management and customer support. 

Founded in 2021 by Omri Sagzan and Aviv Nahum, Ctrl’s co-founders bring extensive experience to the table. Omri previously worked as an investor at Pitango and in Cisco's mergers and acquisitions department in London, while Aviv served as a cybersecurity researcher in Unit 81 and as a consultant for Battery Ventures. In early 2023, Ctrl completed a $9 million seed funding round led by LocalGlobe and Earlybird, with participation from Dig Ventures, Jibe Ventures, and sales managers from companies including Slack, Intercom, Personio, and Databricks.

Sana, established in 2016 by Joel Halmerck, was among the pioneers in using artificial intelligence in organizations. Its current clients include Electrolux, Robinhood, Merck, HingeHealth, and Svea Solar. In April, the company launched an open version that enabled the creation of 100,000 new work environments within six months. Concurrent with the acquisition of Ctrl, Sana announced the completion of a $55 million funding round at a valuation of $500 million, bringing its total investment since inception to $135 million. The funding was led by investment firms NEA, Menlo Ventures, and EQT Ventures.

Ctrl's platform serves sales, support, and customer success teams in organizations. It automatically aggregates all workflows related to customer acquisition and management, integrates with existing systems, and adapts to the specific needs of companies and users. The result is a concentration of information on a single platform, enabling quick retrieval when necessary, significantly saving work time, improving the organizational sales framework, and increasing customer satisfaction while reducing deal loss. Ctrl optimizes workflows using artificial intelligence, sends updates to CRM fields, advises sales and support staff on additional steps to take with clients, and creates a transparent work environment where the entire team is updated in real time about customer interactions. The platform has attracted teams from companies including Stripe, Airtable, and Snowflake.

Sana has developed technology that allows organizations to build customized AI tools that serve as organizational assistants for any team or workflow without the need for coding. These tools integrate with the existing technology systems in companies, enabling users to make decisions based on complete data. The company’s platform allows for comprehensive searches across all knowledge, data, and enterprise applications, enabling the creation of a wide range of AI tools based on specific skills, behaviors, and data, as well as multi-step workflows. It provides organizations the ability to connect hundreds of users to each tool at different permission levels. The platform is protected by high-level security and privacy, with self-audit capabilities and a new interface that allows AI tools to explain and justify their actions.

Sana acquires Ctrl to expand its product capabilities and accelerate development. The acquisition will enable Sana to expand into additional use cases and provide solutions for all end users within the organization. Additionally, Ctrl will add another layer of actions that users can perform across all their platforms directly from Sana's UI.

Omri Sagzan, co-founder, CEO, and CPO of Ctrl, stated, “Sana is at the forefront of the organizational AI revolution. However, despite all the innovations, we are still scratching the surface of what the technology allows us. Artificial intelligence plays an increasingly significant role in the work environment of employees. We share a vision with Sana of leveraging AI beyond knowledge management to solve complex, multi-step workflows.”

Aviv Nahum, co-founder of Ctrl, added, “Our vision and technology align seamlessly with Sana's core operations. By becoming part of the company, we will accelerate the development of AI-based solutions that revolutionize the way people work and make even the most complex tasks intuitive and productive.”

Joel Halmerck, founder and CEO of Sana, remarked, “Omri, Aviv, and their team are leading experts in AI-based automation of organizational workflows. Integrating Ctrl into the Sana family is a significant step toward realizing our vision of building intelligent AI agents that automate routine tasks and empower organizations to focus more on strategic initiatives.”