Another tech firm chose North Texas as its new home. After closing a $40 million investment in January, the AI company Inbenta announced it’s moving its headquarters from San Francisco to Allen, Texas and named North Texan Melissa Solis as the company’s new CEO.
According to Dallas Innovates, the company was founded in Spain in 2005, and since then it’s opened regional offices in the U.S., Europe, Brazil and Japan. Specialized in conversational AI for companies, since the mid-2000s, many reports have placed the company among the top players in the market.
The decision to move the company’s headquarters to Allen comes from the new CEO’s background. Before working for the AI company, Melissa Solis co-founded Giact, an identity and payments fraud-detecting company that was also based in Allen. The company was sold to the American-British financial software company Refinitiv in late 2020, at a time when fraud threats became an increased risk at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Inbenta is set to open the new location this summer. According to the Dallas Business Journal, one of the reasons why Allen was picked to be home to the new headquarters is the access to talent.
“North Texas universities and colleges have made significant progress over the past 20 years preparing students for today’s business and technology opportunities,” said Solis in a prepared statement. “Whereas North Texas firms had to recruit outside of the region previously, today we have incredible talent right here.”
Solis also believes Allen does not just offer an amazing talent pool but also community support. “You have people like those at the Allen Economic Development Corporation, and banks and other companies that are local that really support you and are there to help you,” she told Dallas Innovates. “We still care for one another, we like to see people succeed, and I think that’s really what sets Allen apart and makes it different.”
For the corporate relocation, Inbenta is leasing a 5,000-square feet office space in the One Bethany West high-rise located west of U.S. 75 on Bethany Drive. This would be the second California-based tech company to take offices in the building. In September 2021, the mobile network company MD7 LLC took 25,000 square feet of offices to move its headquarters.
