A Startup that Sells Human-Like AI Agents Raised $35 Million in Funding

IBL News | New York

Decagon, a gen AI startup that sells customer support solutions, raised $30 million in Series A funding and $5 million in seed funding.

The Seed round was led by a16z, and the Series A was led by Accel with participation from A*, Elad Gil, and angels including Aaron Levie (CEO, Box), Howie Liu (CEO, Airtable), Matt MacInnis (COO, Rippling), Aaref Hilaly (Partner, BCV), Mike Vernal (Ex-Sequoia), Frederic Kerrest (Cofounder, Okta), Jack Altman (CEO, Lattice), and Ed Hallen (Cofounder, Klaviyo).

Founded by CEO Jesse Zhang and CTO Ashwin Sreenivas [in the picture below], Decagon provides businesses such as Eventbrite, Bilt, Webflow, Substack, and Rippling with a generative AI platform that mirrors human capabilities by handling complex customer support jobs.

“By integrating with our customers’ existing workflows, our AI agents can take tangible action on behalf of the customer, such as processing a refund request or postponing an upcoming shipment,” said Jesse Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Decagon.

Decagon’s AI-powered analytics dashboard automatically reviews and categorizes customer conversations to identify themes and suggests additions to the knowledge base to better address customer inquiries.

Its platform is built on a mix of large language models, including both third-party and fine-tuned models. It regularly tests and selects the optimal model for each task, such as categorizing an incoming request, checking a message for accuracy, or writing a final response to the customer.

It also functions as a company’s internal customer support liaison, providing services like creating software bug reports, analyzing customer emails to suggest product improvements, or writing internal documentation.

The company is competing with other well-capitalized customer support AI startups, such as Forethought, which has raised over $90 million.