Decagon AI is one of the highest profile AI support agent startups to emerge in the post-ChatGPT wave. Based in San Francisco and founded in 2023, it builds generative AI agents that automate customer support across chat, email and, more recently, voice.
Despite its short history, Decagon has attracted substantial venture funding and a strong logo list, which has pushed its valuation into unicorn territory faster than many longer standing vendors in customer service technology.
This article gives an overview of Decagon AI, its strengths and limitations, and then looks at when enterprises might also consider more established Agentic AI platforms such as Teneo.
Decagon AI company overview
Decagon positions itself as a provider of AI support agents that can act like employees, resolving a high share of tickets on their own while still feeling human and empathetic.
The platform is aimed at companies that want to automate a large portion of their customer support across digital channels without rebuilding their entire tech stack.
Company snapshot
- Founded: 2023
- Headquarters: San Francisco, California
- Team size: A few hundred employees and growing (Series C stage)
- Funding: Around 231 million dollars in total, including a 65 million dollar Series B in 2024 and a 131 million dollar Series C in 2025
- Valuation: Approximately 1.5 billion dollars as of the Series C round in mid 2025
- Founders: Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas
- Representative customers: Notion, Duolingo, Rippling, Bilt, Substack, Eventbrite and other high growth SaaS brands
- Website: decagon.ai
What does Decagon AI do?
Decagon sells a cloud platform for AI support agents that sit in front of existing ticketing and CRM systems. These agents are designed to:
- Answer product and policy questions
- Perform actions such as refunds, cancellations or account changes
- Handle support
- Operate across channels like chat, email, SMS and increasingly voice
The idea is that instead of building many separate flows or FAQ bots, companies deploy one or more Decagon agents that can learn from documentation, historical tickets and policies, then autonomously handle a large share of incoming volume.
Key takeaways on Decagon AI
- Very young company with strong momentum
Founded in 2023, Decagon has already reached unicorn status with several funding rounds and a growing team. - Core product built on large language models (LLMs)
Decagon’s value lies in its AI agents built on large language models, this method is prone to hallucinations. - Limited long term track record
High profile SaaS and consumer brands use Decagon, but multi year data from highly regulated, voice heavy contact centers is still emerging.
Decagon AI’s best alternative for enterprises: Teneo
For many enterprises, the question is not whether AI agents are useful, but how to combine them with the reliability, governance and language coverage needed in large contact centers.
This is where more established Agentic AI platforms such as Teneo come into the picture. Teneo is an enterprise grade agentic AI platform that combines deterministic linguistic models with LLMs and plugs into existing contact center and CX stacks.
Rather than being tied to a single foundation model or vendor, Teneo is designed as an orchestration layer for voice and digital automation at scale.
Hybrid AI and TLML
- Teneo uses its proprietary Teneo Linguistic Modeling Language (TLML) alongside LLMs. This deterministic layer improves intent accuracy, gives fine grained control and reduces the cost and instability that can come from using raw generative models alone.
Language coverage and scale
- The platform supports development in over 86 languages, including pre built accelerators for major markets.
- Deployments include a Magnificent 7 technology company reaching 99 percent NLU accuracy and 90 percent total call understanding across 42 languages, as well as telecom and healthcare leaders handling millions of monthly calls.
Enterprise grade voice and contact center focus
- Teneo Agentic AI, Conversational IVR, and voice AI products are designed specifically for large contact centers, improving NLU accuracy up to 99 percent and reducing misrouting by around 90 percent in some published case studies.
Model and vendor flexibility
- Teneo is vendor agnostic. Enterprises can orchestrate multiple NLU engines and LLMs, and change providers over time without redesigning journeys from scratch.
Governance and deployment options
The platform is HIPAA, ISO 27001, GDPR, EU AI Act, and SOC 2 compliant. More information can be found at Teneo Security Center.
When to consider Teneo instead of Decagon
Consider Decagon AI if:
- You are a small company with no need for enterprise grade security
- Do not care if your answers include hallucinations
Consider Teneo AI if:
- You are a global enterprise that needs to scale AI across countries, brands and regions
- You already use a CCaaS platform and want to add reliable, Agentic AI on top of your existing stack
- You require strong governance, high accuracy, explainability and flexible deployment options