Decagon, a San Francisco startup building conversational AI agents for customer service, announced Tuesday it has raised $250 million in Series D funding at a $4.5 billion valuation, tripling its worth in just six months. Coatue Management and Index Ventures led the round, with participation from ChemistryVC, Definition Capital, and Starwood Capital, alongside continued support from existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and Bain Capital Ventures.
The financing follows rapid enterprise adoption throughout 2025, with Decagon signing more than 100 new customers across travel, hospitality, financial services, health and wellness, and online retail. The funding comes as enterprises increasingly view AI customer support not merely as cost reduction but as core infrastructure for revenue growth, brand trust, and competitive differentiation. Cofounders Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas, who met at an Andreessen Horowitz retreat in Utah, started Decagon in 2023 after surveying businesses about where AI could deliver maximum impact.
Decagon's platform deploys AI concierge agents that operate across voice, chat, email, SMS, and other channels using natural language understanding combined with code-level precision. The company's Agent Operating Procedures enable customer experience teams to launch AI agents quickly while maintaining safety guardrails. The platform achieves average deflection rates exceeding eighty percent, demonstrating that automation scale and service quality need not trade off against each other.
Current customers span multiple verticals and use cases. Travel and hospitality clients include Avis Budget Group, Hertz, Away Travel, Kindred rentals, EasyPark, Contiki group tours, and Duolingo. Financial services adopters include Chime, Varo Bank, Affirm, Block, and Deutsche Telekom. Other notable customers include Oura Health, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Hunter Douglas, and Grubhub. Avis Budget Group CEO Brian Choi stated that earning customer trust at scale demands operational excellence and willingness to rethink service delivery fundamentally.
The platform differentiates itself through proactive customer engagement capabilities. Rather than reactive ticket resolution, Decagon agents can initiate contact—for example, automatically calling travelers to rebook flights immediately after cancellations. This concierge-first approach contrasts with configuration-driven tools that Decagon says fail to deliver genuinely personalized experiences. The company reports that nearly all current customers evaluated other AI solutions before selecting Decagon, with many replacing first-wave automation infrastructure or abandoning internal builds.
Lucas Swisher, General Partner at Coatue Management, noted that as AI unlocks hyperscale commerce, Decagon enables concierge-level interactions at scale, which explains why trusted brands choose the platform to modernize customer experience. Sofia Dolfe, Partner at Index Ventures, emphasized the founders' approach of reimagining customer experience from first principles—treating it as something designed with taste, intention, and delight rather than accepting existing paradigms.
The company faces growing competition from newer entrants like Sierra Technologies and established enterprise software providers including Salesforce. However, Decagon's customer base reflects the full spectrum of AI adoption stages, from businesses just starting AI implementation to sophisticated organizations replacing legacy automation systems. The fresh capital will accelerate infrastructure scaling and deployment velocity while deepening integrations with major CRM systems and expanding the engineering team.
