Businesses have spent the past few years bolting together separate tools for customer support, email marketing, SMS, and live chat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Circeus<\/a>\u2018s latest acquisition consolidates many of those functions into an all-in-one conversational commerce platform operating across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and website chat.\u00a0<\/p>\n The London-based AI-native holding company has acquired Dondy<\/a>, an all-in-one conversational commerce platform used by more than 70,000 businesses globally. Dondy will now join Shop Circle, Circeus\u2019s agentic commerce software division.<\/p>\n How it all works<\/p>\n \u201cDespite WhatsApp\u2019s enormous reach, most businesses have historically treated it primarily as a messaging or customer-support channel rather than a fully integrated commerce channel. AI is increasingly making it possible to turn tools that perform tasks into systems that deliver outcomes, and that is the model we are applying across our portfolio,\u201d\u00a0Luca Cartechini<\/a>, co-founder and CEO of Circeus, and\u00a0Carlos Villanueva<\/a>, GM of Shop Circle and part of Circeus\u2019 founding team, tell Tech Funding News.\u00a0<\/p>\n In practice, Dondy\u2019s AI agents sit inside customer conversations across its supported channels. A customer might receive a casual reminder for items left in their cart, or a notice on delivery timing. Over time, Dondy is designed to handle full tasks, such as completing a purchase or resolving a return, prompted by the customer in the chat thread.<\/p>\n The technology is already live in production: Dondy\u2019s AI agents sell and support customers for thousands of merchants today, and 70% of conversations for merchants using the agents are handled and resolved end to end by AI.<\/p>\n Importantly, a user can ask Dondy any question and it will provide a tailored answer, rather than a scripted reply. It operates around the clock and operates in multiple languages, so a merchant\u2019s WhatsApp presence isn\u2019t limited by the hours and language barriers of a support team.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are excited to join Circeus. We believe that together we can grow Dondy 10x in the coming years, learning, improving and becoming more efficient through collaboration with the group\u2019s business units and companies. Together with Circeus we can continue our dream: to build one of the central platforms in commerce, helping brands grow and operate more efficiently with AI,\u201d the co-founders of Dondy, Tamir Or<\/a>, Or Schreiber<\/a> and Inbal Katz<\/a> tell Tech Funding News.<\/p>\n $100m in orders, and barely scratching the surface\u00a0<\/p>\n Dondy already routes over $100 million in annual merchant orders and more than a million customer conversations a year through WhatsApp. With a global user base above 3 billion, the volume on WhatsApp represents a small fraction of a channel most Western commerce software still treats as secondary to email and SMS.<\/p>\n Dondy currently holds the top App Store ranking in Shopify\u2019s \u201cWhatsApp\u201d and \u201cWhatsApp Marketing\u201d categories.<\/p>\n Circeus\u2019 roadmap intentionally pushes toward software that can act rather than just assist.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead of merchants drafting campaigns and replying to tickets, Dondy is meant to run those common workflows autonomously. Over time, the platform is intended to handle customer interactions end to end across every channel, including email, TikTok, Telegram and any new channel that emerges.\u00a0<\/p>\n These tasks include but are not limited to recovering abandoned carts, re-engaging dormant customers, and pushing upsells inside a live conversation, without a person approving each step. Dondy delivers AI through the channels merchants already use, sparing them from adopting a new tool from scratch.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fitting the Circeus playbook<\/p>\n The acquisition tracks a pattern that Circeus has repeated across its portfolio.\u00a0<\/p>\n The holding company searches for software that businesses can\u2019t live without, and then provides AI augmentation to propel the enterprise further. This approach mirrors why Circeus acquired document automation provider Encodian<\/a> earlier this month. Encodian was already a category leader embedded in a widely used ecosystem rather than competing to build reach from zero.<\/p>\n