Zenzap raises $44 million to replace WhatsApp at work

Zenzap's pitch rests on a division Weiss draws sharply: Slack and Microsoft Teams, in his telling, were not designed for the mobile-first, day-to-day messaging that average staff use, while consumer apps like WhatsApp and iMessage fail corporate IT rules. That leaves what Bessemer's Adam Fisher calls the other 99% of employees, who Fisher says use personal messaging apps at work and are "waiting for an agent of their own".

The funding is also a first for its founder. Weiss bootstrapped e-commerce marketing platform StuccoMedia in 2012 and sold it to Market Group in 2015, then spent years as an investor before founding Zenzap in 2022 with co-founders Noam Neumann and Jonatan Bien, initially working from Bessemer's office on his own capital. He said Fisher pushed him toward a venture-backed path because scaling would require capital.

The client list points to where the product is landing: multi-site operators such as FedEx, Dollar General, Taco Bell, Starbucks, Casey's and Regal, with Weiss noting IHOP and McDonald's branches coordinating shifts and supply. Each vertical, he says, self-serves its own workflows with AI. Zenzap now has 50 staff across the U.S., Tel Aviv and Europe, and intends to hire in product and R&D.