Portland startup Sturdy.ai raises $6M to help companies reduce customer churn and boost retention with AI

Sturdy.ai, a Portland-based startup that analyzes customer conversations using AI, has raised $6 million in seed funding to help companies catch churn signals early and improve retention. The round was led by Voyager Capital, with participation from Fortson VC and returning backer Grotech Ventures. The new capital will be used to deepen Sturdy’s AI models, expand its integrations with customer-facing systems, and build out sales and engineering.

Sturdy.ai Aims to Make Lost Customers a Thing of the Past

Companies spend millions trying to figure out why customers leave—but most don’t realize there’s a problem until it’s too late. That’s exactly what Sturdy.ai is built to solve. Founded by Steve Hazelton, Nathaniel Hazelton, and Joel Passen, Sturdy is building what it calls an “AI-first intelligent interface for all things customer.”

Most customer success tools rely on backward-looking data like usage metrics or NPS scores. Sturdy flips that by starting with the conversation itself. It plugs into platforms like Gmail, Outlook, Salesforce, Hubspot, Zendesk, Gong, Zoom, Jira, and others, scans for signals across all those channels, and gives teams early warnings before deals go sideways.

One of their customers, Syntrio, credits Sturdy with helping save $1.2 million in renewals that were at risk. The platform picked up on common complaints around integration issues and delayed responses, triggering alerts that prompted managers to step in before contracts were lost.

“Sturdy gives us visibility into problems before they become revenue problems,” Hazelton told us. “It’s like having a second brain watching every conversation and surfacing the stuff that matters.”

Company Growth and Vision

The company is still small, with just 15 employees across the U.S., but it’s hiring in sales, engineering, product, and data science. It’s also closing in on $1 million in annual recurring revenue. Voyager Capital’s Diane Fraiman is joining the board as part of the round. “Sturdy’s approach is different from what we’ve seen in customer success,” she said. “They’re not just building another dashboard—they’re building a system that acts.”

Hazelton and his co-founders aren’t new to this. The three have worked together at multiple startups, including Newton Software, Gravity Technologies, and Paycor. That experience shows in how fast they’ve shipped product and landed traction with customers.

Sturdy isn’t trying to replace CRM or support platforms—it’s trying to make them smarter by surfacing what those systems usually miss. And if it works, they could help companies keep customers—and revenue—long before it slips away.