
Enterprise support is being rebuilt around AI agents. On one side, a St. Louis specialist that crossed $100M in recurring revenue; on the other, the largest software company alive shipping the same feature straight into Copilot.

The St. Louis company raised more than $155 million, turned profitable at $60 million in annual recurring revenue, and is pitching itself as the AI layer that answers questions before a ticket is ever opened - a direct shot at incumbents like Freshworks.

Forrester's 2026 scorecard for customer-service AI crowns NiCE Cognigy, Kore.ai and Omilia as leaders, hands Bret Taylor's Sierra a breakout, and quietly leaves Google off the list entirely. The bots that used to answer questions now close tickets - and the whole industry is racing to prove it.
One company bought its way to 20,000 customers. The other raised $78 million to build a single autonomous agent. Both want to end the support ticket - they just disagree on how.