Companies are pitting AI-powered customer service agents against one another. Decagon’s CEO Jesse Zhang says his company’s AI software has won time and again.Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas competed in science and math Olympiad competitions growing up. Now as cofounders of Decagon, the duo has raised $100 million to build AI agents that companies are pitting against other tools to evaluate performance.people would like.
Today, Decagon announced it’s raising $65 million in a Series B round led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from tech investor Elad Gil and marquee VC firms Accel and Bond Capital, among others. With $100 million in total funding to date, the startup is now valued at $650 million. The company plans to use the funding to grow the team, go after new types of customers and add a voice feature to itas product.
“If you take greater reasoning capabilities and put it together with tool use, the ability for software to use other software tools like web browsers, then we're on the cusp of having agents that can do a lot of repetitive work that humans don't like to do,” Aaref Hilaly, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures toldCompanies using Decagon’s customer service chatbots are already changing their hiring plans.
The 27-year-old CEO said that key to the adoption of its software isn’t just more ably providing customers with reliable and accurate information, but also giving companies visibility and control over how the chatbots respond to customers’ queries.