In the evolving landscape of sales and customer service, where artificial intelligence increasingly reshapes human interactions, one startup is gaining decisive momentum. Second Nature, a dynamic AI-powered training platform, has secured $22 million in a Series B funding round, signaling strong investor confidence in its vision to revolutionize how sales and service teams prepare for the future.
Founded in 2019 by Ariel Hitron, a veteran entrepreneur known for scaling Kaltura, and Alon Shalita, a former lead engineer at Facebook, Second Nature leverages conversational AI to simulate real-world customer interactions through roleplay. The platform builds a detailed data model of each client’s unique sales and service playbook by analyzing everything from recorded calls to marketing collateral and scripts. It then creates interactive, AI-powered roleplay scenarios that enable reps to practice objection handling, adapt to diverse customer moods, and sharpen their messaging — all without the risk or pressure of live calls.
The recent funding round, led by Sienna VC with participation from Bright Pixel, StageOne Ventures, Cardumen Capital, Signals VC, and the AI user and investor Zoom, will accelerate product innovation and global expansion. As Hitron puts it, “AI is rapidly rewriting the rules for sales, service, and go-to-market teams. Our platform helps companies onboard faster, improve performance, and deploy new product messages more effectively. This round empowers us to embed personalized AI training, coaching, and certification seamlessly into workflows across industries.”
The platform’s impact is already measurable. Clients including Oracle, Adobe, Teleperformance, and Check Point have reported a consistent sales uplift of over 20% after just 30 minutes of training per employee. Additionally, onboarding timelines have contracted dramatically — sometimes by as much as three weeks — allowing companies to accelerate their go-to-market velocity in a competitive environment.
Second Nature’s technology stands out for its scalability and linguistic diversity, supporting over 20 languages and multiple conversational scenarios. This versatility has enabled its application beyond traditional sales teams into sectors such as healthcare, education, waste management, and insurance. For instance, insurance marketplace GoHealth reported a 33% reduction in onboarding time alongside a 20% sales increase, while Zoom achieved a doubling in monthly opportunities and full sales team participation in training.
Investors are bullish on the startup’s trajectory. Mikaël Pereira, Partner at Sienna VC, emphasizes the company’s strategic positioning: “Second Nature is setting the standard for AI roleplay training and is well poised to lead the next frontier: AI sales agents, which will be a pillar in modern go-to-market strategies.” Similarly, StageOne Ventures’ Tal Slobodkin noted their ongoing faith since their initial 2019 investment, highlighting the startup’s ability to convert AI role-play innovation into tangible business results.
Editorial Perspective
Second Nature’s approach arrives at a critical inflection point for sales and service organizations navigating the complex demands of AI integration. As enterprises increasingly seek efficiency gains and agility, traditional training methods — often costly, time-consuming, and inconsistent — fall short. By offering a simulation environment where reps can engage repeatedly with AI avatars mimicking real customer behaviors, Second Nature not only accelerates skill acquisition but creates a safe space for experimentation and learning from failure, which is crucial for adapting to evolving market dynamics.
Moreover, the company’s data-driven customization, pulling from actual organizational materials, ensures relevance and fidelity that generic training platforms lack. This bespoke AI roleplay model addresses a key industry challenge: how to preserve human empathy and adaptability while leveraging automation for scale and consistency.
Looking ahead, the prospect of AI sales agents—virtual team members trained to handle simpler interactions autonomously—is an exciting extension of Second Nature’s platform. If executed well, it could redefine customer engagement paradigms, reduce burnout among human reps, and unleash strategic human capital on higher-value tasks.
In the broader ecosystem, Second Nature exemplifies the growing Israeli-American tech synergy, combining Silicon Valley engineering prowess with robust European venture backing. This cross-continental momentum positions the startup to not only capture significant market share in the AI-driven sales enablement space but also to influence how enterprises worldwide rethink customer experience in an increasingly automated world.
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