Enterprise AI platform for contact centers — real-time coaching for human agents plus AI virtual agents; surpassed $100M ARR in 2026
HQ: Palo Alto, California, United States | Founded: 2017 | Employees: 500+ | Stage: Series D / private unicorn | Website: https://cresta.com
Cresta came out of Stanford AI Lab research with an unusual thesis: the biggest AI wins in customer service wouldn't come from replacing humans first, but from making human agents measurably better in real time. Founders Zayd Enam (who left a Stanford PhD program to start the company), Tim Shi (an early OpenAI engineer), and Sebastian Thrun (the Stanford professor behind Google X) had been researching how AI improves human performance of complex tasks.
The platform does three things in one system. First, real-time agent assist: while a human speaks with a customer, Cresta listens, surfaces the right process, and coaches in the moment — converting what top performers do into behaviors every agent can follow. Second, conversation intelligence: post-call insights, AI-driven quality management, and coaching that scale oversight across thousands of agents. Third, AI agents: Cresta's virtual agents (launched October 2024, now omnichannel across voice and digital) handle conversations end-to-end on the same platform — so enterprises can automate the routine and elevate the human moments without stitching together separate vendors.
The traction case is concrete. In the two years before its November 2024 Series D, Cresta nearly quadrupled ARR and nearly doubled its customer base. In Q2 2025 it set records: 17 enterprise lands, a 154% quarter-over-quarter jump in new AI Agent bookings, and a 10x increase in partner-sourced revenue. By April 2026, CEO Ping Wu announced on CNBC that Cresta had surpassed $100M in annual recurring revenue.
Leadership has evolved with scale. Ping Wu — who spent 14 years at Google and co-founded Google's Contact Center AI (Dialogflow/Virtual Agent) and helped start Vertex AI — joined Cresta in 2021 and became CEO in 2023; founder Zayd Enam transitioned out of the role. Sequoia's Douglas Leone chairs the board. The company operates engineering hubs in Palo Alto, San Francisco, New York, Berlin, Toronto, Romania, and India, and sells into contact centers of 200 to 10,000+ seats across fintech, travel, healthcare, insurance, and retail.
Cresta chose the harder path in contact-center AI — augmenting human agents in real time rather than just replacing them — and it's paying off: ARR nearly quadrupled in two years to cross $100M in 2026, with Fortune 500 logos like Cox, Hilton, CarMax, and Intuit. CEO Ping Wu, who co-founded Google's Contact Center AI, is now layering autonomous AI agents on top, betting the future contact center is human plus AI in one platform.
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