Sherpa, the superior virtual personal assistant for Android-powered mobile devices, today announced that it has raised $1.6 million in an angel round of funding. Sherpa launched the beta version in Spanish-speaking countries at the end of 2012, becoming the number one virtual assistant in the Spanish-speaking world in just three months, and will take on the English-speaking market next.

Sherpa launched its Android app in beta in October 2012. Since then, it has received more than 400,000 downloads on Google Play in Spain and Latin America, gaining wide acclaim for capabilities that are superior to other existing virtual personal assistants on the market today.

Sherpa uses its extremely accurate patented natural language information gathering system to access information, transact business over the Internet and manage devices, making it “the new interface for the consumer’s digital life.” Sherpa is also the first voice-enabled virtual personal assistant that can complete online transactions, helping users to make travel arrangements and transfer funds thanks to partnerships with reliable and trusted partners such as PayPal.

“As consumers’ real and digital lives converge, enabling natural and effective interactions with devices − via voice and typing − will be the new frontier of digital convergence. This platform has the potential to transform how we harness the power of devices and the Internet in ways we have yet to imagine,” said Xabier Uribe-Etxebarria, founder and chief executive officer, Sherpa. “Sherpa offers a superior virtual assistance experience that is more accurate, engaging, proactive and realistic. This funding will allow us to further develop, expand and continue to improve our technology to make it a streamlined and useful platform with an unbelievable user experience.”

The advanced technology behind Sherpa’s platform synthesizes and interprets interactions and transactions in a progressive, iterative, natural and customized manner. The free platform works by communicating the smartphone user’s spoken or typed questions or instructions to a cloud-based system, which then collects information from Web-based information databases and APIs such as Wikipedia and Social Networks. Sherpa’s capabilities were recently analyzed in a Gartner research note titled “Sherpa: The End of Search as You Know It for CRM,” by Johan Jacobs, research director.

Sherpa’s beta version is currently available for download in Spain and Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America on Google Play, and plans to expand its geographical and language footprint to regions including North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa in Q2 2013.

About Sherpa

Sherpa is the world’s most advanced multilingual voice-enabled personal assistant designed for smartphones, cars and digital devices. With headquarters in Bilbao and Redwood City, the application uses advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) and semantics to create a natural dialogue between humans and digital devices. Sherpa was developed based on research done by Xabier Uribe-Etxebarria, who founded Anboto Group and has an extensive background in natural language processing and machine translation. Sherpa’s innovative natural language understanding and dialogue management technology is patented both internationally and in the United States.

For more information about Sherpa, go to: http://www.sher.pa.