Cresta

Cresta is an enterprise AI-native contact center platform that combines autonomous AI Agents, real-time Agent Assist, and Conversation Intelligence in a unified system for human and AI agents. Cresta was founded in 2017 at Stanford's AI Lab by Sebastian Thrun, Tim Shi and Zayd Enam, and is led by CEO Ping Wu, co-founder of Google Contact Center AI. The company has raised over $270 million from investors including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Tiger Global, Qatar Investment Authority, J.P. Morgan, Accenture, Qualcomm, and Workday Ventures, and reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue in 2026. Cresta AI Agent powers autonomous customer conversations across voice, chat, and SMS in more than 30 languages. Agents use customer history and preferences to personalize each interaction and connect them into one continuous conversation through shared memory that ensures context is never lost across channels, handoffs, or between human and AI agents. Agents connect to CRM, billing, scheduling, and other systems via secure API-based function calling and Model Context Protocol support to retrieve data and complete tasks in real time. Cresta consumes MCP as a client to reach customer systems rather than exposing an MCP server for external clients to connect into. AI agents are optimized for each channel: real-time voice conversations, structured digital messaging, and SMS. Cresta Conductor, launched 11 June 2026, is a natural-language engine for the entire agent lifecycle that lets developers build, test, and improve production-grade AI agents grounded in business context. The Agent Operations Center is a unified command hub for all contact center conversations, both human and AI-led. Supervisors oversee live conversations with AI that flags when intervention is needed, guide the next response, take over instantly in critical moments, and ensure every interaction remains accurate, compliant, and on brand. Agent Assist provides real-time guidance, knowledge, and workflow automation that turns every human agent into a top performer. Conversation Intelligence surfaces signals hidden in every conversation and captures voice-of-the-customer insights at scale. Opera, launched in 2023, is a no-code orchestration engine for the same platform. Integration depth spans five categories. Telephony and chat: Five9, Amazon Connect, Nice, Genesys, Avaya, LivePerson, Twilio, Cisco, and Siprec. Knowledge: Google Drive, SharePoint, Zendesk, Bloomfire, Shelf, and Contentful. CRM: Salesforce, Pega, ServiceNow, Microsoft, Pipedrive, Zendesk, HubSpot, Oracle, Intercom, and Zoho. Marketing: Shopify, Facebook, Adobe, HubSpot, Marketo, and Bynder. Data: Databricks, AWS, MySQL, and SQS. Missing from the current integration set: no native Jira or Linear integration for issue tracking workflows, confirmed against the rendered integrations directory rather than a fetch. Pricing is custom and requires sales engagement. There is no published pricing page, no published tiers and no self-serve trial. Cresta targets enterprise contact centers and mid-market organizations with high conversation volumes. Annual contracts are standard at this tier. No currency is stated on any public Cresta surface, including the terms of service and privacy policy. Cresta is not the right fit for small teams or startups with low conversation volume. The enterprise sales motion, custom pricing, and implementation requirements make it unsuitable for organizations handling fewer than a few thousand conversations per month. Teams wanting a self-serve AI customer support agent with published per-resolution pricing should evaluate Intercom Fin at $0.99 per resolution or Zendesk AI at $55/mo billed annually. Organizations that need a standalone AI chatbot without telephony integration will find Cresta overbuilt for their needs. Current state Q3 2026: Cresta holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 42001:2023 for AI governance, HIPAA, GDPR and CCPA, all confirmed on its SafeBase trust center at trust.cresta.com. The same portal publishes ISO/IEC 27701, SOC 3 with a publicly downloadable report, TISAX and CPRA, and states that Cresta is a certified Level 1 service provider under PCI DSS. Cresta is among the first companies certified under ISO/IEC 42001, the global standard for AI governance. All PII is automatically redacted with automated compliance controls, and Cresta states that no protected medical or financial signals are used in training. Models are trained on customer data tailored to each customer with strict data boundaries. Cresta was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave for Conversation Intelligence Solutions for Contact Centers, Q2 2025. The company has grown to 600+ employees across 10+ team hubs and announced partnerships with TELUS Digital and the New York Mets. Snap Finance reported a 40% reduction in average handle time, containment rate improvement from 6% to 33%, 5.5x higher containment overall, a 23% increase in customer satisfaction scores, and a move from random sampling to 100% quality assurance automation on all calls after deploying Cresta.