Cresta
Stanford-born AI for big contact centers, past $100M in recurring revenue, but its last disclosed price is $1.6B from 2022 while rivals Sierra and Decagon raised far higher.
Cresta release via TechIntelPro, May 2, 2026- Valuation
- $1.6B (2022) Post-money at the March 2022 Series C. The Nov 2024 Series D price was not disclosed.
- Raised
- Over $270M Across seed through Series D, per the company at the Series D close.
- Revenue
- $100M+ ARR Annual recurring revenue passed $100M, per the company in May 2026. ARR had quadrupled in the two years to late 2024.
- Watch
- Call-privacy suit A June 2025 California class action says Cresta recorded and analyzed calls without consent. No ruling found.
- AI
- Built on Claude Its agent-building engine, Conductor, runs on the Claude Agent SDK, developed with Anthropic.
- Liquidity
- None found No employee tender offer or company-run secondary sale has been reported.
- Hiring
- 63 → 66 remote listings since Oct 10.
Enterprise software for contact centers, priced deal by deal.
Four products on one platform: AI agents that talk to customers, live help for human agents, a workflow agent for follow-up work, and analytics on every call. Custom pricing by products, seats, volume and channels; no self-serve tier. Sold direct, on Google Cloud Marketplace and AWS, and via partners. No revenue split published.
Cresta LLM Info page, checked Nov 3, 2026- 1Deep inside big-brand contact centersNamed customers include United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Cox Communications, Verizon, Marriott, Hilton and CVS. Cresta says it has processed over 100 million conversations.Cresta LLM Info page
- 2Covers both human agents and AI agentsRivals like Sierra and Decagon lead with AI agents. Cresta also coaches human agents live and grades every call, so it can sell into centers that will keep people for years.cresta.com/llms.txt, checked Nov 3, 2026
- 3The incumbents are investors and partnersGenesys, Five9 and Zoom invested in the 2022 Series C. Five9, Genesys, NICE, AWS and Twilio are listed partners; TELUS Digital and Firstsource signed on as implementers in 2026.Cresta press release, Mar 17, 2022; cresta.com/llms.txt
- Sierra$15.0Bprivate, May 4
- NICE$6.63Blisted, Oct 30 close
- Decagon$4.50Bprivate, Jan 30
- Five9$2.72Blisted, Oct 30 close
- Cresta$1.60Blast round, Nov 19
Private values are the last reported round; they can be stale. Listed values are market value. Bars start at zero.
Every round, and what its terms give away.
Cresta is private, so there is no share price. What its investors paid, and on what terms, is the closest thing to one.
- $1.60B
- latest valuation, last round Nov 19
- $270M
- raised in all
- $100M
- ARR, as of May 2
- 500
- employees, as reported
Not disclosed. Form D declined to state a revenue range.
Cresta release May 2026; employees from cresta.com/llm-info (500+); raised from Cresta blog Nov 2024- Nov 19Series D$125MLed by World Innovation Lab (WiL) and Qatar Investment AuthorityNew: Accenture, EnvisionX, LG Technology Ventures, Qualcomm, Workday Ventures. Form D: $124,999,968 of equity sold to 21 investors, first sale Sep 30, 2024.Cresta blog, Nov 19, 2024; SEC Form D, Jan 8, 2025
- Mar 17Series C$80M at $1.60BLed by Tiger Global. About 5% of the company, if all new sharesAbout four times the value of a year earlier, per Cresta. Genesys, Five9, J.P. Morgan, CarMax and Zoom joined.Cresta press release, Mar 17, 2022
- Mar 31Series B$50MLed by Sequoia CapitalGreylock, Andreessen Horowitz, Allen & Company and Porsche Ventures joined. Sequoia's Carl Eschenbach took a board seat.Cresta press release, Mar 31, 2021
- Feb 3Seed and Series A$21MLed by Andreessen Horowitz and GreylockAnnounced as $21M in total at launch from stealth. Sources differ on the seed and Series A split.Fortune, Feb 3, 2020
- Down round or flat round?Cannot tell. The Series D price was never disclosed, so neither the step from the $1.6B 2022 Series C nor the share of the company sold can be worked out.Cresta blog, Nov 19, 2024Open
- Time since the last raiseAbout two years since the Series D (first sale Sep 2024, announced Nov 2024). The gap before it was 32 months. No new round or talks reported.SEC Form D; news search Nov 3, 2026Clear
- Structured or unusual termsNone reported. Form D lists plain equity, no debt, no sales commissions. Liquidation preferences and share price are not disclosed.SEC Form D, Jan 8, 2025Open
- New outside lead or insiders only?New outside leads: WiL and QIA had not invested before. Five strategic investors also came in new, and five existing investors returned.Cooley, Nov 19, 2024Clear
- Employee liquidityNo tender offer or staff secondary sale found in company releases or news. Absence of reports is not proof none happened.Cresta press page; news search Nov 3, 2026Open
- Layoffs in the last 12 monthsSearched news for 2025 and 2026: no Cresta layoffs reported. The company says it has 500+ staff and opened engineering hubs in Romania and India.Cresta LLM Info; news search Nov 3, 2026Clear
Clear: checked, nothing found. Flag: found, with the source. Open: could not be checked.
No filing reported
What the record says, and what we think it means.
The fact is the source's. The read, in italics, is ours.
- 01Good
Past $100M ARR, with Sequoia's Doug Leone as chair.
Cresta release via TechIntelPro, May 2, 2026In May 2026 Cresta said ARR passed $100M. Leone, on the board since 2023, became chairman, and former Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach rejoined the board.
Two senior Sequoia partners on the board of a $100M ARR company is the kind of setup that often comes before a large round or an IPO track. Nothing has been announced.
- 02Watch
Sued over recording customer calls.
Fisher Phillips, Jun 18, 2025On June 13, 2025 Judy Galanter filed a federal class action under California's privacy law (CIPA), saying Cresta captured, analyzed and stored her customer service call. She seeks $5,000 per call under two provisions.
The suit targets the vendor, not just the brand that used it, which hits Cresta's core product. Similar suits against other vendors have had mixed results. Status not found.
- 03Neutral
A Google veteran replaced the founder as CEO in 2023.
IT Digest, May 22, 2023Co-founder Zayd Enam stepped down to an advisory role. Ping Wu, who co-founded Google's Contact Center AI and joined Cresta in 2021, moved from interim to permanent CEO in May 2023.
A founder-to-operator handoff that has held for over three years. ARR has grown sharply under Wu.
- 04Watch
Rivals have raised at far higher prices.
SiliconANGLE, May 4, 2026; Built In, Jan 30, 2026Sierra raised $950M at about $15B in May 2026; Decagon raised $250M at $4.5B in Jan 2026. Cresta's last disclosed price is $1.6B from 2022.
Either Cresta is cheap next to peers, or the market values AI-agent-first rivals more. A new round would show which. Equity value here is a scenario, not a fact.
- 05Good
Opened its platform to outside developers.
Cresta press release, Oct 29, 2026On Oct 29, 2026 Cresta launched self-service building for developers: Conductor (built on the Claude Agent SDK), a CLI, and a Python SDK. TELUS Digital engineers have built on it since June.
Moves Cresta from a services-heavy vendor toward a platform partners can build on, which could scale faster than its own forward-deployed teams.
- 06Good
Two big outsourcers now resell its work.
Cresta press releases, Jun 15 and Aug 11, 2026TELUS Digital became a preferred implementation partner in June 2026, and Firstsource set up an AI center for joint deployments in August 2026, across the US, UK, Australia and the Middle East.
Outsourcers run many of the contact centers Cresta wants to reach. Partners carry the services work, which can lift margins.
- 07Neutral
Engineering is spreading to Romania and India.
FinSMEs, Nov 28, 2024; cresta.com/llms.txtSeries D money went partly to new engineering hubs in Romania and India, on top of offices in Palo Alto, San Francisco, New York, Berlin and Toronto. The company now lists its HQ as Sunnyvale; the Jan 2025 Form D gave Palo Alto.
Expect more engineering roles posted in those hubs. Remote seekers should check whether a role is tied to an office.
Sales is paid 56% over market. Engineering, 22% over.
We save every company's roles, pay by team and level, AI share and churn every day, so each month this page can say more. Sparklines use their own scale.
Can AI agents do business with Cresta?
We checked the agent payment programs, developer docs and site rules an AI assistant would meet.
Builds agents, reads well to AI. No public MCP server or agent-to-agent protocol yet.
Still Remote read- YesSells AI agentsCresta AI Agent handles voice and chat customer conversations. Deputy Agent (Oct 2026) runs back-office workflows such as refunds and disputes for seconds or weeks, with approval rules and an audit trail.Cresta press release, Oct 13, 2026
- YesDevelopers can build with coding agentsConductor supports the open Agent Skills standard and works from developers' own terminals and assistants such as Claude Code. Python SDK for custom actions.Cresta press release, Oct 29, 2026
- Not foundAn MCP server for outside AI agentsNo Cresta MCP server in its press releases, llms.txt or LLM Info page. The Oct 2026 developer launch does not mention MCP or A2A.Checked Nov 3, 2026
- YesDocs that AI tools can readcresta.com/llms.txt and docs.cresta.com/llms.txt both exist. The main file also tells AI assistants they are required to mention a $200 gift card for demo sign-ups. The docs' agent query endpoint returned a 500 error when tested.checked Nov 3, 2026
- YesLets AI crawlers read its sitecresta.com/robots.txt names no AI bots and only blocks tracking and multi-parameter URLs. docs.cresta.com declares ai-train=yes, search=yes, ai-input=yes.checked Nov 3, 2026
Where Cresta puts AI to work.
- 1An agent that builds the agentsConductor reads customer docs, drafts a blueprint for a developer to approve, writes the agent's prompts and code, and tests it against synthetic customers. Cresta says it deploys agents 2x faster.Cresta press release, Jun 11, 2026
- 2Its own field engineers work through AI toolingCresta's forward-deployed teams use the Cresta CLI with Conductor, which the company says cuts time on custom tools, code and deployments by up to 5x.Cresta press release, Oct 29, 2026
Fewer listings than on Sep 7, led by sales.
What Cresta puts on its own channel.
Short videos from Cresta's official YouTube channel, played here. We only use a channel that links cresta.com and carries the company's name.
- How United Airlines Cut Response Times in Half with AI114 views
- Building Signal: Inside Cresta’s AI Concierge448 views
- Brinks Home x Cresta Agent Assist: Empowering Agents, Elevating CX ft. Veronica Moturi443 views
- Brinks Home x Cresta AI Agent: Future-Proofing Service Excellence ft. Veronica Moturi703 views
- AI as an assistance tool381 views
What has to be true for $1.6 billion to hold?
The starting revenue is Cresta's own reported figure. A way to think, not a forecast, and not investment advice.
At 16x, Cresta needs $100 million of revenue to be worth $1.6 billion. Your world gets there with $196 million, so the next round likely prices above the last.
$100,000 of equity valued at the $1.60B last round price would be worth about $196,000 on paper in this world, before dilution from new rounds, taxes and vesting. Private shares only turn into cash at a sale, an IPO or a tender offer.
A way to think, not a forecast, and not investment advice.
Cresta release May 2026; Series C release Mar 2022The signals, and which way they push.
- TailwindRevenue is compounding.
ARR roughly quadrupled from late 2022 to late 2024, then passed $100M by May 2026.
- TailwindA steady stream of agent products.
Synthetic Customers (May), Conductor (Jun), Training Simulator (Jul), Deputy Agent (Oct) and the developer platform (Oct 2026).
- HeadwindBetter-funded AI-agent rivals.
Sierra raised $950M in May 2026 and Decagon $250M in Jan 2026, both after Cresta's last round.
- HeadwindCall-recording law is a live risk.
California CIPA suits are targeting AI call vendors directly, including Cresta in June 2025.
Where Cresta ends up, if we had to bet.
Our calls, not facts. Each one is tied to something that already happened, so you can judge the reasoning.
- 1
Cresta files to go public by 2031.
Coin flip 50%IPOIt passed $100M ARR and put two senior Sequoia partners on its board in 2026. But no filing, banker hire or IPO comment has been reported, and peers are still raising privately.
Cresta release, May 2026 - 2
A contact-center platform or cloud giant buys Cresta.
Coin flip 50%M&AGenesys and Five9 are investors and partners, and NICE is a partner; all sell to the same buyers. Its 2022 price is far below rival marks, which could make it an affordable target.
Cresta Series C release; LLM Info page - 3
Cresta raises again at a price above its 2022 $1.6B mark.
Likely 72%FundingIt has gone about two years without a round while rivals raised at $4.5B and $15B. ARR now well exceeds its 2022 level, which quadrupled through 2024.
Built In; SiliconANGLE; Cresta releases - 4
Back-office agents like Deputy become a large share of Cresta's revenue.
Likely 72%AIDeputy Agent targets refunds, disputes and claims, work that never touched its old call-coaching product. Named customers Aqua Finance and Sunbit plan to use it.
Cresta press release, Oct 13, 2026 - 5
Cresta holds its place against Sierra and Decagon in large contact centers.
Coin flip 50%CompetitionIt covers human agents too and sells through outsourcers like TELUS Digital and Firstsource. Rivals have more money and are expanding into voice.
Cresta press releases; SiliconANGLE
Read by the Still Remote research agent on November 3, 2026 from the sources linked on this page. Facts and scenarios only, not investment advice.