Gorgias

Gorgias operates a customer-conversation platform for ecommerce brands, combining a helpdesk with AI automation. All customer conversations — email, live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and voice — arrive in a single inbox alongside the shopper's Shopify order, customer and product data, with a two-way Shopify sync that lets agents cancel orders, issue discounts or upsell from inside a conversation. The platform connects to 300+ commerce apps, including Klaviyo, Recharge, Yotpo and Loop Returns, and includes team collaboration, routing and revenue-attribution reporting that ties conversations to conversions, orders influenced and average order value.

The company's AI Agent operates in two roles — Shopping Assistant before purchase (product questions, recommendations) and Support Agent after purchase (order tracking, returns, refunds, order edits) — and is positioned as able to resolve up to about 60% of conversations automatically. Gorgias states the AI is trained on a brand's own products, policies and tone of voice, with guardrails, reviewable interactions and escalation hand-off to human agents; it also offers AI coaching for agents and AI Journeys for proactive outbound 1:1 conversations. Gorgias describes itself as AI-native and built specifically for Shopify rather than adapted to it, and cites a direct OpenAI partnership, with AI Agent originally powered by GPT-4o.

Gorgias describes itself as a private software company and a certified B Corporation, and reports having processed 500 million ecommerce support tickets, with AI pre-trained on more than 1 billion conversations.

Founding story

Gorgias was founded in Paris in 2015 by Romain Lapeyre and Alex Plugaru. The first product was a Chrome extension that helped users write emails faster through automation; when the founders found that most users were customer support agents, they refocused the company on building a helpdesk for support teams.

Business model

Gorgias sells software-as-a-service to ecommerce brands, offering a free trial and self-serve signup alongside a demo-led sales motion. Pricing is based on conversation volume rather than per seat, which the company positions as more predictable for brands whose teams or volumes scale seasonally.

Subscription software revenue tied to conversation volume rather than agent seats; the company reported $25M ARR in 2022.

Traction

Gorgias reports 16,400 merchants on its about page and 17,000+ ecommerce brands on its homepage, more than 400 employees, and a 4.4/5 rating from 632 Shopify App Store reviews. The company's own timeline shows growth from 6,800+ customers and 70+ employees in 2020 to 8,000+ in 2021 and 10,000+ in 2022, with $25M ARR in 2022. It cites $500M+ in revenue driven through conversations, an average 4.2x return on investment, and customer results including 56% automation within two months (Orthofeet, later above 50% sustained) and over 40% of inquiries automated across channels at Psycho Bunny.

Latest developments

In May 2024 Gorgias announced $29M in Series C-2 funding from existing investors including Shopify, earmarked for AI Agent, an autonomous AI teammate built on brands' own knowledge bases and integrations and powered by OpenAI's GPT-4o; AI Agent launched in July 2024. The company subsequently promoted AI Agent 3.0, which acts on orders, refunds and returns across channels and is coached by an assistant called Gaia, and repositioned itself as a conversational commerce platform spanning Helpdesk, AI Agent, Voice and AI Journeys.