Decagon Secures $131 Million in Funding, Advancing AI-Powered Customer Service Solutions

Customer service AI startup Decagon raises $131 million

SAN FRANCISCO, June 23 (Reuters) - Decagon, a startup providing customer service solutions powered by artificial intelligence, said on Monday it had raised $131 million in a funding round that valued it at $1.5 billion. The San Francisco company's Series C round was led by venture capital firms Accel and Andreessen Horowitz, with existing investors A*, Bain Capital Ventures and BOND participating. Avra, Forerunner and Ribbit Capital also took part in the round. The fundraise comes less than a year after a Series B round, when it raised $65 million at a $650 million valuation. The funding establishes Decagon as one of the most highly valued AI startups providing AI customer support solutions. Its competitors include giants like Salesforce (CRM.N), opens new tab and startups like Sierra, helmed by OpenAI board chairman and former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor. In October, Sierra raised $175 million in a funding round giving it a $4.5 billion valuation. Since OpenAI's ChatGPT burst on the scene, investor interest in funding AI technology has gradually shifted from expensive foundation models to applications that generate steady revenue. Decagon serves clients such as Hertz, Duolingo (DUOL.O), opens new tab, Eventbrite (EB.N), opens new tab and Chime (CHYM.O), opens new tab. The company will use its funding to grow the team and sell into more enterprises, its CEO Jesse Zhang told Reuters. Financial services company Chime saw a 60% reduction in contact center costs from using Decagon and a doubling of its net promoter score, a measure of customer satisfaction, Zhang said. "When AI can take action and solve things, customers can get what they want much faster and more consistently," he said. The company provides both text-based AI customer support solutions like chat and email as well as AI voice agents that are capable of end-to-end customer support calls. Decagon's software tools also allow companies to create their own AI customer support solutions, Zhang said. Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco; Editing by Tom Hogue Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Technology Anna Tong Thomson Reuters Anna Tong is a correspondent for Reuters based in San Francisco, where she reports on the technology industry. She joined Reuters in 2023 after working at the San Francisco Standard as a data editor. Tong previously worked at technology startups as a product manager and at Google where she worked in user insights and helped run a call center. Tong graduated from Harvard University.

Chatbot startup Decagon gets $131M to build personalized AI agents for every consumer - SiliconANGLE

Chatbot startup Decagon gets $131M to build personalized AI agents for every consumer Decagon AI Inc., a startup that builds artificial intelligence-powered customer service agents for businesses, has closed on its third major funding round in the space of just 12 months, raising $131 million today. The Series C round, which values the company at $1.5 billion, was led by the venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Accel and saw participation from existing backers including A*, Bain Capital Ventures, Avra, Forerunner, Ribbit Capital and Bond Ventures. The startup provides both text- and voice-based customer support bots that can automate customer interactions across chat, email and phone calls, together with software tools that allow companies to customize those bots. Unlike some other chatbots, Decagon's have "agentic" capabilities that enable them to take actions on behalf of customers to service the entire customer support lifecycle. They utilize complex business logic to reason and take action on behalf of customer support agents, analyze trends, create and update knowledge base articles, and more besides. In addition, their performance improves over time, based on the feedback from customers who engage with them. The startup says its intelligent chatbots are the result of combining third-party large language models with its own, fine-tuned AI algorithms. It explained that it's able to mix and match various types of models, or even combinations of multiple models, to find the best mix for different customer service-related tasks. The company continually experiments and tests these combinations of models to ensure it can provide the most helpful, friendly and accurate customer service chatbots around, free from inaccurate or toxic outputs. Today's round comes eight months after Decagon closed on a $65 million Series B round of funding in October, following a $35 million Series A round almost a year to the day. It means Decagon is now one of the most heavily capitalized startups that's pursuing AI-powered customer support, where it competes against technology industry giants such as Salesforce Inc. and smaller players such as Sierra Technologies Inc., which is led by former Salesforce co-Chief Executive Bret Taylor. Decagon says its customers include companies such as Hertz Corp., Duolingo Inc., Eventbrite Inc. and Chime Financial Inc. In an blog post, Decagon Chief Executive Jesse Zhang (pictured, left, alongside co-founder Ashwin Sreenivas) said Chime was able to reduce its contact center operating costs by more than 60% with the help of its AI agents, while doubling its net promoter score, which is a widely used measure of customer satisfaction. According to Zhang, the company will use the money from today's round to grow its teams and expand sales to more enterprises. He said Decagon is working to build a future where every brand will be able to offer its customers a "personalized AI agent" that they can talk to 24/7, which knows everything about them and can take actions on their behalf. "It's a completely new way for consumers to interact with every brand," Zhang said. "We believe the future of customer experience is proactive, and more than that, it's authentic, intelligent and truly satisfying."

Customer service AI startup Decagon raises $131 million

The funding establishes Decagon as one of the most highly valued AI startups providing AI customer support solutions. Its competitors include giants like Salesforce and startups like Sierra, helmed by OpenAI board chairman and former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor.Decagon, a startup providing customer service solutions powered by artificial intelligence, said on Monday it had raised $131 million in a funding round that valued it at $1.5 billion. The San Francisco company's Series C round was led by venture capital firms Accel and Andreessen Horowitz, with existing investors A*, Bain Capital Ventures and BOND participating. Avra, Forerunner and Ribbit Capital also took part in the round. The fundraise comes less than a year after a Series B round, when it raised $65 million at a $650 million valuation. The funding establishes Decagon as one of the most highly valued AI startups providing AI customer support solutions. Its competitors include giants like Salesforce and startups like Sierra, helmed by OpenAI board chairman and former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor. In October, Sierra raised $175 million in a funding round giving it a $4.5 billion valuation. Since OpenAI's ChatGPT burst on the scene, investor interest in funding AI technology has gradually shifted from expensive foundation models to applications that generate steady revenue. Decagon serves clients such as Hertz, Duolingo, Eventbrite and Chime. The company will use its funding to grow the team and sell into more enterprises, its CEO Jesse Zhang told Reuters. Financial services company Chime saw a 60% reduction in contact center costs from using Decagon and a doubling of its net promoter score, a measure of customer satisfaction, Zhang said. "When AI can take action and solve things, customers can get what they want much faster and more consistently," he said. The company provides both text-based AI customer support solutions like chat and email as well as AI voice agents that are capable of end-to-end customer support calls. Decagon's software tools also allow companies to create their own AI customer support solutions, Zhang said.