€4m · Other round · Software · Milan, Italy
Milan-based TextYess has raised €4m in a seed extension to expand its AI-operated CRM for ecommerce brands and enter international markets, beginning with the UK. Italian Founders Fund led the round, with existing investors VC Partners and Entourage participating. TextYess says more than 350 brands use its software, including Ducati, Veralab and PittaRosso.
The company describes the financing as an extension of its seed round and says total funding now exceeds €7m. That cumulative figure is not the size of this €4m extension.
The CRM becomes an operating layer
TextYess started with AI agents on WhatsApp in 2024, answering customer questions, recommending products and recovering sales. Its newer proposition is broader: a CRM that combines orders, conversations and behaviour in one customer profile, then uses agents to identify opportunities, build segments, write campaigns and run flows across email, WhatsApp and the retailer's website. The product keeps people in the approval loop, with teams able to edit the audience, message and timing before anything is sent.
The commercial mechanism is the amount of retention work a brand can execute without expanding its marketing team at the same rate. A conventional CRM can store data and trigger pre-built flows, but someone still has to decide which customer group matters, prepare each campaign and interpret the result. TextYess is trying to turn that sequence into a repeating operating loop. If the agents can use purchase history and conversations accurately, the same customer context can support more personalised campaigns across several channels rather than another isolated automation tool.
That integration also concentrates risk. A weak segment, inaccurate recommendation or poorly timed message can now travel across more than one customer touchpoint. The approval model matters because TextYess must prove that greater execution volume produces incremental repeat revenue without eroding brand voice or customer trust. Italian Founders Fund's stated thesis is that customer proximity, product speed and shared context across channels can matter more than a proprietary model during this platform shift.
UK expansion tests whether the workflow travels
The company says some brands have already moved their wider CRM workload onto TextYess, and that it has initial customers in the UK. The funding will grow the AI team, continue developing the autonomous CRM and support that expansion. Moving from an Italy-centred customer base into a second market tests more than translation: the product must fit new brands' data, catalogues, campaign processes and channel choices while preserving the controls that make autonomous execution acceptable.
TextYess was founded in Milan in 2023 by Riccardo Russo and Edvaldo Gjonikaj. Its next evidence will be whether the 350-brand base converts into repeatable adoption of the full CRM, rather than continued use of individual WhatsApp features. That would show the company can move from adding a productive channel to owning the workflow that decides what ecommerce teams send, to whom and why.
Sources checked:
TextYess announcement · Italian Founders Fund · Forbes Italia · TextYess product site · Tech.eu Funding Explorer
