will.i.am: 'The computer is my instrument'

Nicole Sinclair · Markets Correspondent

Tue, Nov 7, 2017, 1:40 PM

will.i.am is best known for being a founding member of the band The Black Eyed Peas. But lately the award-winning musician spends much of his time in the world of tech.

“Tech has always been a passion of mine,” he told Yahoo Finance recently at the annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. “The computer is my instrument. It helped me take my ideas and spread them around the world.”

Growing iam+

His startup, iam+, focuses on wearable consumer electronics and has raised $117 million in venture funding. And the company just announced it is entering the enterprise computing market with the launch of “Omega,” a voice assistant for customer service.

“I started my company, iam+, five years ago, went around the world and put an amazing team together … a team filled with AI folks, software designers, building operating systems. We have teams in Bangalore, India, Singapore, Tel Aviv, our headquarters in LA and now in New York.”

The new platform is now live in Germany and Austria, taking over Deutsche Telecom’s call centers doing its customer service work.

“[It’s like] the systems you have in your house—like Alexa times 10—for enterprise that’s conversational, contextual,” he said. “We’ve been working on it for about five years now and are happy to announce it.”