In 2023, not long after Meta offloaded the CRM platform it had acquired for $1 billion a year earlier, Brad Birnbaum saw an opportunity to start over. “For us, 2023 was kind of a moment of clarity: We were able to reassess the market [and] see how we could push forward with AI,” Birnbaum told Inc. The result was Kustomer 2.0: an independent reboot of the company he originally founded in 2015, now rebuilt for Gen AI.
Two years later, the company has raised a $30 million Series B round led by Norwest Venture Partners, with continued support from Battery Ventures, Redpoint, and Boldstart. It follows a $60 million Series A raised immediately after the Meta spinoff. “Kustomer has built the right foundation for this new era of CX,” said Norwest partner Scott Beechuk, who has joined the company’s board. “We believe Kustomer is poised to become the infrastructure layer for intelligent, orchestrated support at scale.”
Rebuilding the Stack for Agentic AI
Kustomer’s pitch, beyond customer support workflows, is about reengineering the underlying system to make automation possible in the first place. While most CX vendors operate with a ticket-based model and layer AI on top, Kustomer offers an agentic platform where AI and human collaboration are deeply integrated into a shared system of record.
Holding that platform together is a “timeline” view that tracks the full history of customer interactions across channels. This design enables its two main AI-native products: AI Agents for Customers and AI Agents for Reps, to operate with full context, pulling from backend systems like ERPs and CRMs in real time. The agents can issue refunds, escalate complex cases, or even update order records without human intervention. According to the company, AI Agents for Customers now autonomously resolve up to 40% of inbound conversations, while AI Agents for Reps increase agent productivity by 30% or more.
“AI alone isn’t enough,” said Birnbaum in a statement announcing the funding. “It has to reach customers and be embedded into the daily workflows of CX teams. That’s what sets Kustomer apart.”
The company frames its architecture as a response to the “frankenstack” of tools that enterprise CX teams typically juggle: legacy helpdesks, standalone AI interfaces, and disconnected databases. This patchwork can create gaps in memory, coordination, and automation logic. “Customer support teams are trapped in what Kustomer calls the ‘frankenstack,’” Beechuk wrote in Norwest’s investment memo. “Modern AI workflows require persistent memory, agentic coordination, and workflow adaptability… and that’s hard to retrofit.”
Kustomer claims that more than 600 brands, including Priceline, Reformation, and Hexclad, are using its platform. It is also positioning its agentic system as compatible with evolving standards like Model Context Protocol (MCP), which could help unify multimodal models and systems of record across enterprises.
Post-Meta, a Strategic Reset
Kustomer’s time under Meta lasted less than three years. Initially announced in 2020, the acquisition was completed in 2022 after a prolonged regulatory review. In 2023, amid CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s “Year of Efficiency,” Meta spun the company off. “We all agreed it was best for the business to divest out and be standalone,” Birnbaum told Inc. That decision coincided with the early adoption curve of LLMs in the enterprise. As a standalone company, Kustomer reoriented itself around building a full-stack, AI-native support system.
The new funding round follows a period of executive expansion and product acceleration. In parallel with the Series B, Kustomer appointed Anna Fisher, formerly of Salesforce and ZoomInfo, as Chief Marketing Officer. The company is also expanding into international markets, with a focus on regional go-to-market teams and localized support capabilities.
Kustomer’s pricing model is usage-based, allowing customers to pay based on consumption rather than seat licenses or flat tiers. The company has not disclosed its valuation following the new round, but it was previously reported at $250 million after its 2023 Series A.
“Agentic platforms with a native system of record will accrue the most value in this next wave of CX innovation,” Beechuk wrote.
