Reply Next raises €400,000 pre-seed round led by 4Founders Capital

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Reply Next has closed a €400,000 pre-seed round led by 4Founders Capital, with business angels including Juanjo Mostazo and David Alcobero taking part. The deal became public at the end of September.

The company sells to brands with many physical locations, each of which produces a steady stream of reviews, ratings, messages and searches on Google Maps, Booking, App Store, Google Play and the newer AI search engines, all of which someone is, in principle, supposed to read. Reply Next gathers them into one panel, and its AI agents answer reviews in each brand's voice, flag recurring problems at specific sites and tune each location's online presence. It manages more than 2,500 brand channels, and its clients include Air Europa, KFC and Comess Group, the group behind Lizarran and Levaduramadre. Founder and CEO Miguel Peñate supplies his own figures for the problem: nine in ten companies, he says, do not know how much revenue Google Maps brings their shops, and 70% of brands do not reply to users on public channels.

The money will go to the technology and sales teams, product development and new agents that automate key processes and decisions. The company has already hired Tony Santana, formerly of Trivago and Tripadvisor, as head of sales, and Diego Martín Hernández as CTO. Its main verticals are restaurants, travel, retail and mobile apps. Spain is the priority market, though 15% of the business already comes from abroad, with Italy, the United Kingdom and Mexico as targets.