The AI Startup Using a Private Equity Growth Playbook

As the cost of running artificial intelligence models falls, the land grab in customer support automation has reached a new level of intensity. Nearly every major enterprise software vendor now offers a product for automating customer support, according to our analysis, which also breaks down how the race to automate knowledge work has bred new turf wars among these firms.

Against this backdrop, a one-year-old startup, Crescendo, is taking a different tack: buying up contact center companies and using AI models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o to lower their costs.