CICADA-SPEECH

Real-time conversational AI for insurance contact centers

Customer Engagement Startup Seed

Overview

Cicada-Speech is a conversational AI company developing a Real-time Conversational AI Platform (RTCAP) for contact centers and customer engagement. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Mountain View, California, the company brings together natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition, and computer vision to enable more natural interactions between humans and automated systems.

The company's research agenda is anchored by three core questions: can AI pass the Turing test, can humans truly talk to machines, and can practical conversational AI be deployed at scale in production contact centers? Its Agent Assist and Virtual Agent products translate that research into commercially deployable solutions for insurance carriers and financial services firms.

Cicada-Speech operates with a small, distributed team of approximately 11 people across three continents and has received institutional backing from LDV Partners.

Products & Services

Agent Assist

Real-time AI assistant that surfaces relevant information and guidance for human contact center agents during live customer calls, enhancing agent performance and consistency.

Key Features

Real-time response suggestions during live calls
Knowledge base surfacing and intent recognition
Consistent guidance across all agents

Target Users: Contact center agents and supervisors at insurance carriers and financial services firms

Virtual Agent

Fully automated conversational AI system capable of handling customer inquiries end-to-end without human involvement, designed to deflect routine contact center volume.

Key Features

End-to-end inquiry handling via voice or text
Natural language understanding and intent classification
Seamless handoff to human agents for complex cases

Target Users: Insurance carriers and financial services companies operating high-volume customer service contact centers

Conversational AI Platform (RTCAP)

Core platform underpinning both Agent Assist and Virtual Agent products, built on Cicada-Speech's proprietary NLP and speech recognition engine.

Key Features

Speech-to-text and voice interaction
Natural language understanding and real-time response generation
Computer vision capabilities for multimodal interactions

Target Users: Enterprise contact center operations teams

At a Glance

Founded: 2020
Headquarters: Mountain View, California, USA
Employees: 11-50
Funding: Seed

Category & Focus

Category: Customer Engagement
Subcategories: Conversational AI Contact Center Automation Virtual Agents Speech Recognition
Insurance Verticals: P&C Commercial P&C Personal Life & Annuity
Target Customers: Carriers, Brokers, MGAs/MGUs