Zenzap raises $44M for workplace AI chat app used by Starbucks, Taco Bell

Zenzap, a private messaging app built for workplaces, has raised $44 million from investors including Bessemer, Lightspeed, and The Garage. Individual backers include Wix president Nir Zohar and Yoram Tietz, a former general manager at EY. The company builds chat software meant to replace the consumer apps, like WhatsApp, Telegram, and iMessage, that many businesses already use to coordinate with staff.

The round is notable because founder Guy Weiss had never raised venture money before. He bootstrapped e-commerce marketing platform StuccoMedia starting in 2012 and sold it to Market Group in 2015, then spent a few years as an investor. He started Zenzap in 2022 after meeting Bessemer partner Adam Fisher, working alongside co-founders Noam Neumann and Jonatan Bien. Weiss told TechCrunch he initially funded the app himself and worked out of Bessemer’s office, saying he was wary of raising a second round after a successful first exit. He said Fisher persuaded him that Zenzap needed outside capital to scale.

Zenzap’s free tier includes group chats, direct messages, task management, calendar integration, schedule management, and AI-powered voice chat and search. Paid plans start at $51 a month for up to 20 users and add voice and video calls, smart task sorting, task templates, more file storage, workspace-wide AI search, and the ability to turn messages into tasks. The company also sells AI agents for automating workflows and transcribing voice notes and calls, billed through a separate credit-based system.

Weiss said existing tools leave a gap for businesses outside the office. “You can’t use WhatsApp or iMessage within a workplace with the AI agent on top of it because it doesn’t comply with IT. So that’s off the table. You can’t implement Slack and Microsoft Teams because they were not built for this day-to-day use case for mobile-first that is meant for average users,” he said.

Zenzap names FedEx, Dollar General, Taco Bell, Starbucks, Casey’s, and Regal as clients, and Weiss said individual branches of chains like IHOP and McDonald’s use the app to coordinate shifts and supplies. He said each industry develops its own workflows on the platform using its AI tools, even though the underlying product stays the same.

Fisher, the Bessemer partner, argued that Zenzap’s broad focus is an advantage rather than a limitation. “The only work platform with any allegiance is Slack, and that’s almost entirely among the developer community. Zenzap is not focused on developers, but on the other 99% of employees using personal messaging apps and waiting for an agent of their own,” he said in a statement to TechCrunch, adding that Bessemer’s own investment team now uses Zenzap to manage deal flow.

Zenzap employs 50 people across the U.S., Tel Aviv, and Europe, and plans to hire more in product and R&D. Whether frontline-heavy industries actually abandon WhatsApp group chats for a paid alternative, rather than using Zenzap alongside them, will depend on how the next wave of enterprise customers sign on.