When a customer reports a bug, the first step is often the most expensive. A support engineer must manually reproduce the issue, trace it through logs, and then translate the problem for a developer. It is a slow, context-switching bottleneck. Decimal AI, a San Mateo-based startup, is betting it can automate that entire investigative loop by giving an AI agent direct access to the source code.
Launched in March 2025, Decimal calls its product a customer engineering platform. Its core agent, branded the AI Support Engineer, is designed to connect a company's helpdesk to its underlying technical infrastructure. Instead of relying on customer descriptions, the system is granted OAuth access to code repositories, log streams, and production data to investigate issues autonomously [Decimal, retrieved 2026]. The company says this allows it to answer questions with evidence and even draft bug fixes for engineering review [AI Brief, retrieved 2026].
The technical wedge
Decimal's differentiation rests on a specific technical integration most support tools avoid. While chatbots can answer FAQs from a knowledge base, they typically lack the permissions and context to query a live codebase. Decimal's platform requires those permissions, connecting via guided OAuth flows to GitHub, GitLab, and observability tools [Decimal, retrieved 2026]. Once connected, the AI Support Engineer can investigate customer issues by reading the actual code, logs, configurations, and production data behind every question [Kapil Mathur - Ex NatWest Markets Plc | LinkedIn, retrieved 2026].
The company claims this approach resolves the class of problems where conventional customer-support AI falls short, focusing on engineering-heavy escalations common at software companies with complex products [Shruti Patil - Engineering Leadership@Uber | Eightfold.ai, retrieved 2026]. For enterprise customers, the platform supports private VPC deployment and customer-managed encryption keys [Decimal, retrieved 2026].
Founders from Eightfold AI and Uber
The co-founders, Sanjeet Hajarnis and Kevin Raji Cherian, met while working at AI talent platform Eightfold AI. Hajarnis, the CEO, previously led engineering teams at Uber, where he worked on dynamic pricing and dispatch algorithms, and at Facebook [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief, retrieved 2026]. Cherian, the CTO, was a senior engineer at Eightfold AI and also has experience from Databricks [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief, retrieved 2026]. Their shared background in large-scale AI systems informs the platform's architecture.
| Role | Name | Prior Experience |
|---|---|---|
| Co-Founder & CEO | Sanjeet Hajarnis | Eightfold AI, Uber, Facebook |
| Co-Founder & CTO | Kevin Raji Cherian | Eightfold AI, Databricks |
Early traction and a $4 million seed
In September 2026, Decimal AI closed a $4 million seed round co-led by Khosla Ventures and Kearny Jackson [Yahoo Finance / PRNewswire, September 2026]. The round included participation from Atlassian Ventures, Weekend Fund, and angels like former Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson [Pulse 2.0, September 2026]. The company reports its support-interaction volume processed by the platform grew 15-fold since early 2026 [The AI Insider, September 2026].
Named early customers include supply-chain risk firm Resilinc, customer data platform Tealium, and Lucidworks, an enterprise search company [Pulse 2.0, September 2026]. In a case study, Decimal claims Resilinc cut its mean time to resolution (MTTR) by 62% using the platform [Decimal, 2026].
The competitive landscape
Decimal operates in a nascent but crowded space aiming to automate technical support. It faces competition from companies like Plain and Sierra, which focus on AI-powered customer communication, and from more developer-centric tools like Decagon and Fin. Decimal's wedge is its depth of technical integration, positioning it not as a communication layer but as a diagnostic engine.
The company is now hiring its first commercial team, with open roles for a Founding Sales Development Representative and an Account Executive based in San Mateo [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief, retrieved 2026]. This indicates a shift from product development to early go-to-market execution.
Scaling the AI Support Engineer
The technical premise is compelling, but scaling it introduces specific challenges. The platform's effectiveness is directly tied to the quality and structure of the code and observability data it accesses. Inconsistent logging, poorly documented services, or sprawling microservice architectures could degrade the agent's diagnostic accuracy. Furthermore, granting an AI system broad read access to code and production data is a significant security consideration, even with VPC deployments and customer-managed keys.
From an engineering standpoint, the system must maintain low latency while correlating data across multiple sources,a non-trivial distributed systems problem. The promise of automated bug fixes also introduces a new workflow: engineers must trust and review AI-generated code patches, which could become a bottleneck if the volume of suggested fixes is high.
For Decimal, the next twelve months will be about proving its model works consistently across a diverse set of codebases and that the value,measured in reduced engineer hours and faster resolution,outweighs the integration and security overhead for new customers.
Sources
- [Decimal, retrieved 2026] What is Decimal? - Decimal | https://docs.decimal.app/introduction
- [AI Brief, retrieved 2026] AI Brief | https://brief.ainews.ai/
- [Kapil Mathur - Ex NatWest Markets Plc | LinkedIn, retrieved 2026] Kapil Mathur - Ex NatWest Markets Plc | LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/kapil-mathur-3a53088/
- [Shruti Patil - Engineering Leadership@Uber | Eightfold.ai, retrieved 2026] Shruti Patil - Engineering Leadership@Uber | Eightfold.ai | https://www.linkedin.com/in/shruti-patil-22373a14/
- [Yahoo Finance / PRNewswire, September 2026] DECIMAL AI ANNOUNCES $4 MILLION SEED ROUND | https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/decimal-ai-announces-4-million-130400833.html
- [Pulse 2.0, September 2026] Decimal AI Raises $4 Million Seed Round To Expand | https://pulse2.com/decimal-ai-raises-4-million-seed-round/
- [The AI Insider, September 2026] Decimal AI Closes $4M in Funding to Build AI Platform for Technical Customer Support | https://theaiinsider.tech/2026/09/16/decimal-ai-closes-4m-in-funding-to-build-ai-platform-for-technical-customer-support/
- [Decimal, 2026] How Resilinc cut MTTR by 62% with Decimal | https://www.decimal.app/blog/resilinc-decimal-case-study-2026