Roxy

Roxy, initially known as Cue, was founded in 2016 by a team with extensive experience from major tech companies, including Cameron Urban, Le Huang, and Peng Shao. The founding team's background includes Cameron Urban's experience as a program manager at Microsoft Azure and as a serial entrepreneur, Peng Shao's leadership role on Amazon's cloud speech team for Alexa, and Le Huang's four years as a web developer at Amazon working on projects like Amazon Coins and the Kindle Device Store. Their paths converged at the University of Washington's CoMotion innovation hub, where they decided to pool their expertise to create a voice-activated solution for the hospitality industry.

The company developed a speech-enabled device designed to function as an in-room concierge for hotels. This hardware was built to provide hotel guests with immediate access to property-specific information and services through voice commands. The device's functionality allows guests to make requests for housekeeping, set wake-up calls, ask for valet service, and get recommendations, all without needing to use the room's phone. For hotel operators, Roxy was designed to replace several in-room items like the phone, alarm clock, and guest booklet, thereby aiming to reduce operational costs and increase staff efficiency. The platform also offers analytics, providing insights into guest behavior and service requests.

Roxy's business model is centered on providing a fully customizable platform for hotels, allowing them to control the device's persona, services, and branding. This B2B focus differentiated it from mainstream consumer smart speakers. The company secured $2.2 million in a seed funding round on November 15, 2017, with participation from investors such as AJ Capital Partners, Alchemist Accelerator, and Betaworks Ventures. By May 2019, Roxy had been acquired by Angie Hospitality, a competitor in the hotel voice assistant market. At the time of the acquisition, the device was being used in several hotels across North America, including properties in San Francisco, Portland, and Vancouver.

Keywords: in-room concierge, hotel technology, voice assistant, guest experience, hospitality automation, smart speaker, speech-enabled device, hotel operations, guest services, digital assistant, Cam Urban, Le Huang, Peng Shao, Angie Hospitality, hospitality tech, hotel management, voice recognition, property management system, IoT for hotels, smart room