Element451 Inc., a startup that develops software for higher education institutions, today disclosed that it has raised $175 million in funding.

The capital was provided by growth equity firm PSG.

Element541 provides a customer relationship management platform for colleges and universities. The software is built around a database that academic institutions can use to store student information centrally. It lends itself to holding college applications, data about the marketing materials with which a student interacts, and a long list of other records. 

The information that an academic institution keeps in Element451 can be made available to a set of built-in artificial intelligence tools. Those tools promise to save time for academic staff by automating repetitive parts of their work. 

One AI tool, Element Discover, is a search engine that can field questions about an educational institution. Instead of providing links to knowledge base articles, it directly answers student questions using large language models. Element451 says that embedding the search engine into a university’s website takes a few minutes.

To ease the task of processing student inquiries that the search engine can’t answer, the company provides an AI assistant. BoltBot, as it’s called, not only finds information but also automates tasks such as arranging event registrations. Universities can embed the chatbot into their websites like the Element Discover search engine, as well as make it accessible through other channels such as WhatsApp.

Element451 also offers a set of more specialized chatbots that each focus on a different set of tasks. Some are designed to field questions from students, while others promise to help university staff carry out their day-to-day work more efficiently. One of the chatbots in the latter category automatically generates marketing campaigns based on a set of goals provided by the user.

Campaign creation is one several marketing use cases that Element451’s platform supports. It provides a drag-and drop tool for creating landing pages, as well as an AI assistant that can automate parts of the page design process. Prepackaged content templates reduce the amount of work involved in creating promotional materials.

Element451’s feature set also covers several other use cases. There are tools that speed up the task of processing college applications. A project management feature, Bolt Tasks, allows teams to track outstanding projects in a to-do list. 

“We’ve developed AI solutions that aim to empower institutions to create meaningful connections with students while reducing the administrative burden on staff,” said Element451 founder and Chief Executive Officer Ardis Kadiu. “Our partnership with PSG will accelerate our ability to meet this urgent market need.”

The company disclosed on occasion of today’s funding round that its customer count has grown by 346% since 2021. Element451’s software is now used by more than 250 academic institutions.

Image: Element451