Scala, a Bellevue-based AI startup founded by Smartsheet CEO Rajeev Singh and former Accolade executive Ardie Sameti, raised $8.5 million in a seed round co-led by prominent Seattle-area venture firms Madrona and FUSE.
GeekWire first reported on Scala last year while it was still in stealth. Now the company is revealing more details about its “operational intelligence platform” for contact centers — the massive customer service operations that companies across healthcare, travel, and financial services rely on to handle millions of interactions.
Sameti, Scala’s CEO, said companies spend heavily on customer experience tools but often aren’t able to connect into a full picture of what’s happening across their specific workflows and systems.
Scala is trying to fill that gap. Instead of focusing on a single use case, the company positions itself as an intelligence layer that sits across a contact center’s existing technology stack. Scala’s platform consists of three main components:
- Pulse, a proprietary reasoning engine that pulls in data from across a company’s systems — CRM, knowledge bases, other internal records — and surfaces insights and operational hotspots.
- Agent Canvas lets operators design and deploy AI agents for both customer-facing and internal workflows.
- Pulse Assist acts as what Sameti calls an “AI ops sidekick” — essentially a ChatGPT for contact center operators that can help plan, execute tasks, and support decision-making.
Sameti spent a decade at healthcare software company Accolade, where he led AI and platform efforts supporting member interactions. That’s where he learned about problems facing customer experience leaders.
“It wasn’t these operators that were failing,” he said. “It was these systems and tools around them.”
Scala has customers across healthcare, travel, and financial services. Sameti declined to share specific names or numbers.
Asked about competition from well-funded AI customer experience startups like Sierra, Sameti said Scala differentiates by stretching across an entire operation rather than focusing on “narrow point solutions.”
Sameti used a restaurant analogy: many competitors are trying to automate the host at the front door. Scala wants to understand everything from the host to the server to the kitchen to the bartender, and coordinate across all of it.
Sameti also described AI agents as a commodity. “They’re not a moat,” he said. Instead, the moat is about having deep domain expertise, he said. Investors share the same sentiment.
“They’ve spent years inside complex service organizations, and that perspective shows up clearly in how Scala is being built — a holistic service solution spanning all aspects of the CX journey,” Kellan Carter, general partner at FUSE, said in a statement.
Scala recently moved into its first permanent office in downtown Bellevue. The company has nearly 20 employees.
Singh, who was named Smartsheet’s CEO in November, is co-founder and executive chair of Scala. He previously co-founded Concur Technologies, which SAP acquired for $8.3 billion, and was CEO at Accolade, leading the company through its IPO. Mike Hilton, former chief product officer at Accolade, is also an investor in Scala.
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