AI Startup Decagon In Talks To Raise $100 Million At A $1.5 Billion Valuation
AI startup Decagon, which is building customer service-focused agents, is in talks to raise $100 million in fresh funding at a $1.5 billion valuation, according to five sources familiar with the deal.
Andreessen Horowitz and Accel are leading the round, with participation from existing investors, according to four of the people. The company has more than $10 million in signed contracts (often denoted using the term annual recurring revenue), according to two sources.
Decagon confirmed it has been in talks to raise additional funding, but said the round hasn't been closed yet and the figures could change. Andreessen Horowitz and Accel did not immediately respond to comment requests.
Decagon is building customer support chatbots and agents— software that can autonomously perform basic tasks— for things like answering questions on how a product works, processing refunds and canceling subscriptions. Companies like Notion, Bilt, Duolingo, Substack and Rippling use Decagon customer support chatbots.
The latest investment comes less than a year after Decagon raised a $65 million Series B round led by Bain Capital Ventures at a $650 million valuation, Forbes reported in October. The new investment would bring Decagon's total funding to $200 million. The company, which was featured on the Forbes AI 50 list, was cofounded by 27-year-old CEO Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas in 2023 after the duo surveyed dozens of companies to find the problem that could best be solved with AI.
Customer support, a tedious but pivotal part of any business, has long been targeted for automation as a means to save millions in labor costs by eliminating largely outsourced customer support teams. Credit card provider Bilt downsized its customer support team from hundreds to 65 with Decagon, Forbes reported last year. And fitness giant ClassPass, which uses Decagon's AI agents to carry out 2.5 million conversations with its customers, has reduced its customer support costs by 95%, according to The Information. 'We think AI agents can be 10x employees,' Zhang told Forbes in March.
Under the hood, Decagon's agents are built on the most advanced models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Cohere, and trained on internal data like how-to blogs, manuals and past customer service conversations. Staff rate and review responses generated by the AI to improve it. In February, Decagon partnered with audio generation startup ElevenLabs to create voice agents to have more natural, human-like conversations with customers.
Customer service software is a competitive market and Decagon is up against companies like $4.5 billion-valued Sierra, helmed by former Salesforce co-CEO and OpenAI board Chairman Bret Taylor, and Salesforce, which has its own AI agents for customer support. The products themselves are also increasingly identical to each other and businesses regularly do what are called bake offs to pit one AI tool against another to see how well they perform on the job.
'Decagon claims they win almost every time they go up against Sierra head to head,' said one investor involved in the talks. 'Ultimately, they are both going to have exactly the same product and it will really be a race to see who can solve a higher percentage of the support calls with the best accuracy.'
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Argo Corporation announces completion of distribution of Preferred Shares, Series A under its special stock dividend and conversion by the holders of its secured convertible debentures
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Forward-looking information is often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "seek", "anticipate", "hope", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "intend", "could", "might", "should", "scheduled", "believe" and similar expressions. Although the forward-looking information contained in this news release is based upon what management of Argo believes are reasonable assumptions on the date of this news release, Argo cannot assure readers that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking information. Forward-looking information involves substantial known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which cause actual results to vary from those expressed or implied by such forward looking information, including without limitation those risks and uncertainties described in more detail in Argo's securities filings available at Forward-looking information should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be an accurate indication of whether or not such results will be achieved. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is provided as of the date hereof. Argo disclaims any intention or obligation to update or publicly revise any forward–looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable securities laws. All forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified in its entirety by the foregoing cautionary statements. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE ARGO CORPORATION View original content to download multimedia:
Yahoo
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Sam Altman Is One of the Richest People in the World. It Isn't Because of OpenAI.
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." 1985–present Who Is Sam Altman? Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is one of the leading proponents of artificial intelligence in the world. Raised in St. Louis, Altman dropped out of college before founding social mapping company Loopt and launching a career as a venture capitalist. He co-founded OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, in 2015 with Elon Musk and others and became CEO in 2019. He remains in this role despite the company's decision to briefly remove him in 2023. In addition to his work in AI, Altman is a successful investor and one of the richest people in the world thanks to stakes in companies such as Reddit and Stripe. Quick Facts FULL NAME: Samuel Harris AltmanBORN: April 22, 1985BIRTHPLACE: Chicago, IllinoisSPOUSE: Oliver Mulherin (2024–present)CHILD: 1 sonASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Taurus Early Life and Family Samuel Harris Altman was born on April 22, 1985, in Chicago. He primarily grew up in St. Louis after his family moved there during his childhood. Sam's mother, Connie Gibstine, works as a dermatologist, while his father, Jerry Altman, was a real estate broker. Sam is the oldest of the couple's four children; he has two brothers, Jack and Max, and a sister, Annie. According to New York Magazine, the close-knit family ate dinner together every night and bonded through games such as table tennis, billiards, and charades. The three Altman boys also played water polo. While Connie is still a practicing doctor, Jerry died unexpectedly from a heart attack in 2018. His death deeply affected Altman. 'I had to pick up the pieces of his life for a little while,' he said in an interview on the What Now? with Trevor Noah podcast. 'And it wasn't until like a week after that, that I really got a moment to just catch my breath and be like, holy sh––, I can't believe this happened.' As adults, Jack and Max developed an entrepreneurial spirit similar to their older brother. Jack co-founded the human resources platform Lattice in 2015 and served as CEO before stepping down in 2023. According to his LinkedIn profile, he now serves as a managing partner at Alt Capital. Max is a co-founder and managing partner at the investment firm Saga Ventures. Altman is estranged from his sister, who has been candid about her mental health and financial struggles. Annie has said the family kept money left to her by her father, and she has supported herself financially through online and in-person sex work. Annie also created and hosts the All Humans Are Human podcast. In January 2025, Annie filed a lawsuit alleging Sam had sexually abused her starting when she was 3 years old. Sam released a joint statement with his mother and brothers calling the claims 'utterly untrue' and countersued his sister for defamation. Both legal proceedings are ongoing. Education Altman developed an interest in technology while in elementary school. At age 8, he received his first computer, an Apple Macintosh, and learned how to code and deconstruct its hardware. 'That was like the glory days of computing, you could immediately do whatever you wanted on the computer, and it was very easy to learn to program, and it was just crazy fun and exciting,' Altman told Stratechery. 'Eventually my parents got me a computer or got us a computer at home, and I was always a crazy nerd, like crazy nerd in like the full sense, just science and math and computers and sci-fi and all of that stuff.' That passion continued into his high school tenure at the John Burroughs School, a private college prep school in St. Louis. While there, Altman befriended a computer science teacher who shared an interest in the future of artificial intelligence. After graduating from Burroughs in 2003, Altman enrolled at Stanford University to study computer science. However, he dropped out two years later at age 19 to create Loopt, an application allowing smartphone users to share their location with friends and colleagues. Altman later said he found the risks of leaving school—and knowing he could always return—worth the potential rewards of forgoing a traditional career path. 'In what is now a very dynamic world, the risky thing is to not go try the things that might really work out,' he said. Investor Altman eventually sold Loopt to banking company Green Dot in 2012 for $43.4 million. However, that was far from his only business project. That same year, Altman used the money from the sale to launch the investment firm Hydrazine, cleverly named after the chemical used in rocket fuel, with his brother Jack. Since 2010, Altman has personally invested in 125 companies, according to The Washington Post. They include Helion Energy, a nuclear fusion researcher; Retro Biosciences, a biotechnology company specializing in cell restoration; and Cruise, a self-driving car company. In 2011, Altman became a partner at Y Combinator, a juggernaut among technology startup accelerators and venture capital firms, and was promoted to president in February 2014. YC has invested in more than 5,000 companies, with DoorDash, Airbnb, Instacart, Twitch, and Reddit among the most recognizable. By December 2015, Altman valued all YC companies at more than $65 billion. Altman eventually stepped down from his role as president in 2019 to focus on another burgeoning venture. OpenAI Co-Founder In December 2015, Altman became one of 11 co-founders of OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company whose goal is to 'advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.' Altman took control as CEO in 2019 after leaving YC. OpenAI is known for creating ChatGPT, a generative chatbot able to respond to written or spoken prompts and questions. As of August 2025, OpenAI has reported roughly 700 million weekly ChatGPT users and is reportedly seeking a valuation of $500 billion. Temporary Removal as CEO In November 2023, the OpenAI board announced it had fired Altman as CEO. In a news release, the company said Altman 'was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.' However, after more than 500 OpenAI employees signed an open letter threatening to leave the company and follow Altman to a new division at Microsoft, the board reached an agreement within five days of his firing for Altman to return to his leadership position. Despite the controversy, Altman has solidified his status as a leading figure in the AI space. Following the creation of ChatGPT, Time included him on its 2023 list of the 100 most influential people. That same year, he testified before U.S. Congress and urged lawmakers to create regulations for the expanding industry. Feud with Elon Musk Tesla CEO Elon Musk initially served as an OpenAI co-chair with Altman, but the pair became mired in a public rift over the latter's direction for the company. Under Altman's guidance, OpenAI began taking on investors and making money through a for-profit subsidiary—contradictory to the company's for-the-greater-good mission. Musk stepped down from the board in 2018 and later created the xAI program, a direct competitor to OpenAI. Then in 2024, Musk escalated his feud by filing two separate lawsuits against Altman and OpenAI, accusing the company of fraud, breach of contract, and reserving some of its most promising technology for private users. Musk also began derisively referring to the CEO as 'Scam Altman.' OpenAI has denied many of the claims in Musk's litigation. 'I wish he would just compete by building the better product, but I think there's been a lot of tactics, many, many lawsuits, all sorts of other crazy stuff,' Altman said. 'We'll try to just put our head down and keep working.' OpenAI ultimately abandoned plans to create a public benefit corporation, which would have taken control of the company away from its nonprofit branch, in 2025. Net Worth According to Forbes, Altman is one of the 2,500 richest people in the world with an estimated net worth of $1.9 billion as of August 20, 2025. Although OpenAI was valued at $157 billion as recently as November 2024, the vast majority of Altman's fortune doesn't stem from the company. He didn't take any equity upon its 2015 launch—which previously caused concern among investors over his confidence in the venture—and only makes $76,000 per year as CEO. 'If I could go back in time, I would have taken [equity], just some little bit, just to never have to answer this question,' Altman said. Instead, Altman owes much of his wealth to investments, including his stakes in Stripe, Reddit, and Helion. According to Fortune, the value of his Reddit shares alone climbed to $1.4 billion by October 2024. Husband Oliver Mulherin and Personal Life Altman married Oliver Mulherin, an Australian software engineer, in January 2024. The pair met at a party in 2015 and immediately connected despite dating other people at the time. Once Altman and Mulherin were a couple, they split their time between San Francisco and a ranch in Napa, California. Altman has spoken about their future plans, telling The San Francisco Standard they hope to build a family with multiple children. 'I am more excited for that than I think I've ever been for anything,' Altman said. 'Let's start with a few [kids] and see how it goes, but maybe a lot.' The couple welcomed their first son through a surrogate in February 2025. Coming out as gay around age 17 was an unusually anxiety-producing experience for Altman. In addition to telling his parents, he shared his sexual orientation with his classmates during a high school assembly. 'I don't really get nervous for stuff, and I was so nervous to do this. Because I was like, mostly out. Most people knew about it, but it was not the kind of school where you would really stand up and talk about being gay and that was okay,' he told Mostly Human Media. 'I got a long standing ovation out of it and, sort of all day at school that day, people telling me how much it meant to them.' Altman considered running for governor of California in 2018 but eventually declined to seek the office. He affirmed his belief in 'techno-capitalism' and has advocated for universal basic income but also described himself as 'politically homeless' in 2025. Quotes The most expensive investing mistake in the world to make is to be a pessimist, and it's a common one. I think that's actually the most common mistake to make in life. We can manage [AI], I am confident about that. But we won't successfully manage it if we're not extremely vigilant about the risks, and if we don't talk very frankly about how badly it could go wrong. We seem to be really great as a society, as individuals, as a species at dealing with change and with technological change. You know, think about how different the world was 20 years ago. We didn't all have smartphones, and that seems unimaginable now. I do think there's something freeing about getting older and caring less what people think. Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! You Might Also Like Nicole Richie's Surprising Adoption Story The Story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Her Mother Queen Camilla's Life in Photos
Yahoo
2 hours ago
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Sam Altman Is One of the Richest People in the World. It Isn't Because of OpenAI.
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." 1985–present Who Is Sam Altman? Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is one of the leading proponents of artificial intelligence in the world. Raised in St. Louis, Altman dropped out of college before founding social mapping company Loopt and launching a career as a venture capitalist. He co-founded OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, in 2015 with Elon Musk and others and became CEO in 2019. He remains in this role despite the company's decision to briefly remove him in 2023. In addition to his work in AI, Altman is a successful investor and one of the richest people in the world thanks to stakes in companies such as Reddit and Stripe. Quick Facts FULL NAME: Samuel Harris AltmanBORN: April 22, 1985BIRTHPLACE: Chicago, IllinoisSPOUSE: Oliver Mulherin (2024–present)CHILD: 1 sonASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Taurus Early Life and Family Samuel Harris Altman was born on April 22, 1985, in Chicago. He primarily grew up in St. Louis after his family moved there during his childhood. Sam's mother, Connie Gibstine, works as a dermatologist, while his father, Jerry Altman, was a real estate broker. Sam is the oldest of the couple's four children; he has two brothers, Jack and Max, and a sister, Annie. According to New York Magazine, the close-knit family ate dinner together every night and bonded through games such as table tennis, billiards, and charades. The three Altman boys also played water polo. While Connie is still a practicing doctor, Jerry died unexpectedly from a heart attack in 2018. His death deeply affected Altman. 'I had to pick up the pieces of his life for a little while,' he said in an interview on the What Now? with Trevor Noah podcast. 'And it wasn't until like a week after that, that I really got a moment to just catch my breath and be like, holy sh––, I can't believe this happened.' As adults, Jack and Max developed an entrepreneurial spirit similar to their older brother. Jack co-founded the human resources platform Lattice in 2015 and served as CEO before stepping down in 2023. According to his LinkedIn profile, he now serves as a managing partner at Alt Capital. Max is a co-founder and managing partner at the investment firm Saga Ventures. Altman is estranged from his sister, who has been candid about her mental health and financial struggles. Annie has said the family kept money left to her by her father, and she has supported herself financially through online and in-person sex work. Annie also created and hosts the All Humans Are Human podcast. In January 2025, Annie filed a lawsuit alleging Sam had sexually abused her starting when she was 3 years old. Sam released a joint statement with his mother and brothers calling the claims 'utterly untrue' and countersued his sister for defamation. Both legal proceedings are ongoing. Education Altman developed an interest in technology while in elementary school. At age 8, he received his first computer, an Apple Macintosh, and learned how to code and deconstruct its hardware. 'That was like the glory days of computing, you could immediately do whatever you wanted on the computer, and it was very easy to learn to program, and it was just crazy fun and exciting,' Altman told Stratechery. 'Eventually my parents got me a computer or got us a computer at home, and I was always a crazy nerd, like crazy nerd in like the full sense, just science and math and computers and sci-fi and all of that stuff.' That passion continued into his high school tenure at the John Burroughs School, a private college prep school in St. Louis. While there, Altman befriended a computer science teacher who shared an interest in the future of artificial intelligence. After graduating from Burroughs in 2003, Altman enrolled at Stanford University to study computer science. However, he dropped out two years later at age 19 to create Loopt, an application allowing smartphone users to share their location with friends and colleagues. Altman later said he found the risks of leaving school—and knowing he could always return—worth the potential rewards of forgoing a traditional career path. 'In what is now a very dynamic world, the risky thing is to not go try the things that might really work out,' he said. Investor Altman eventually sold Loopt to banking company Green Dot in 2012 for $43.4 million. However, that was far from his only business project. That same year, Altman used the money from the sale to launch the investment firm Hydrazine, cleverly named after the chemical used in rocket fuel, with his brother Jack. Since 2010, Altman has personally invested in 125 companies, according to The Washington Post. They include Helion Energy, a nuclear fusion researcher; Retro Biosciences, a biotechnology company specializing in cell restoration; and Cruise, a self-driving car company. In 2011, Altman became a partner at Y Combinator, a juggernaut among technology startup accelerators and venture capital firms, and was promoted to president in February 2014. YC has invested in more than 5,000 companies, with DoorDash, Airbnb, Instacart, Twitch, and Reddit among the most recognizable. By December 2015, Altman valued all YC companies at more than $65 billion. Altman eventually stepped down from his role as president in 2019 to focus on another burgeoning venture. OpenAI Co-Founder In December 2015, Altman became one of 11 co-founders of OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company whose goal is to 'advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.' Altman took control as CEO in 2019 after leaving YC. OpenAI is known for creating ChatGPT, a generative chatbot able to respond to written or spoken prompts and questions. As of August 2025, OpenAI has reported roughly 700 million weekly ChatGPT users and is reportedly seeking a valuation of $500 billion. Temporary Removal as CEO In November 2023, the OpenAI board announced it had fired Altman as CEO. In a news release, the company said Altman 'was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.' However, after more than 500 OpenAI employees signed an open letter threatening to leave the company and follow Altman to a new division at Microsoft, the board reached an agreement within five days of his firing for Altman to return to his leadership position. Despite the controversy, Altman has solidified his status as a leading figure in the AI space. Following the creation of ChatGPT, Time included him on its 2023 list of the 100 most influential people. That same year, he testified before U.S. Congress and urged lawmakers to create regulations for the expanding industry. Feud with Elon Musk Tesla CEO Elon Musk initially served as an OpenAI co-chair with Altman, but the pair became mired in a public rift over the latter's direction for the company. Under Altman's guidance, OpenAI began taking on investors and making money through a for-profit subsidiary—contradictory to the company's for-the-greater-good mission. Musk stepped down from the board in 2018 and later created the xAI program, a direct competitor to OpenAI. Then in 2024, Musk escalated his feud by filing two separate lawsuits against Altman and OpenAI, accusing the company of fraud, breach of contract, and reserving some of its most promising technology for private users. Musk also began derisively referring to the CEO as 'Scam Altman.' OpenAI has denied many of the claims in Musk's litigation. 'I wish he would just compete by building the better product, but I think there's been a lot of tactics, many, many lawsuits, all sorts of other crazy stuff,' Altman said. 'We'll try to just put our head down and keep working.' OpenAI ultimately abandoned plans to create a public benefit corporation, which would have taken control of the company away from its nonprofit branch, in 2025. Net Worth According to Forbes, Altman is one of the 2,500 richest people in the world with an estimated net worth of $1.9 billion as of August 20, 2025. Although OpenAI was valued at $157 billion as recently as November 2024, the vast majority of Altman's fortune doesn't stem from the company. He didn't take any equity upon its 2015 launch—which previously caused concern among investors over his confidence in the venture—and only makes $76,000 per year as CEO. 'If I could go back in time, I would have taken [equity], just some little bit, just to never have to answer this question,' Altman said. Instead, Altman owes much of his wealth to investments, including his stakes in Stripe, Reddit, and Helion. According to Fortune, the value of his Reddit shares alone climbed to $1.4 billion by October 2024. Husband Oliver Mulherin and Personal Life Altman married Oliver Mulherin, an Australian software engineer, in January 2024. The pair met at a party in 2015 and immediately connected despite dating other people at the time. Once Altman and Mulherin were a couple, they split their time between San Francisco and a ranch in Napa, California. Altman has spoken about their future plans, telling The San Francisco Standard they hope to build a family with multiple children. 'I am more excited for that than I think I've ever been for anything,' Altman said. 'Let's start with a few [kids] and see how it goes, but maybe a lot.' The couple welcomed their first son through a surrogate in February 2025. Coming out as gay around age 17 was an unusually anxiety-producing experience for Altman. In addition to telling his parents, he shared his sexual orientation with his classmates during a high school assembly. 'I don't really get nervous for stuff, and I was so nervous to do this. Because I was like, mostly out. Most people knew about it, but it was not the kind of school where you would really stand up and talk about being gay and that was okay,' he told Mostly Human Media. 'I got a long standing ovation out of it and, sort of all day at school that day, people telling me how much it meant to them.' Altman considered running for governor of California in 2018 but eventually declined to seek the office. He affirmed his belief in 'techno-capitalism' and has advocated for universal basic income but also described himself as 'politically homeless' in 2025. Quotes The most expensive investing mistake in the world to make is to be a pessimist, and it's a common one. I think that's actually the most common mistake to make in life. We can manage [AI], I am confident about that. But we won't successfully manage it if we're not extremely vigilant about the risks, and if we don't talk very frankly about how badly it could go wrong. We seem to be really great as a society, as individuals, as a species at dealing with change and with technological change. You know, think about how different the world was 20 years ago. We didn't all have smartphones, and that seems unimaginable now. I do think there's something freeing about getting older and caring less what people think. Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! 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