Dextr AI, a San Francisco startup founded in July 2025, is emerging from stealth with $6.7 million in seed funding to build AI agents that handle reservations, guest requests and staff coordination for hotels. Elevation Capital led the round, with participation from Foundation Capital. It is the company's first institutional financing.
The company was started by Sajid Shariff and Scott Arnold. Shariff returned to the Bay Area in 2024 and reconnected with hospitality contacts, who told him hotels were still dealing with rising labor costs, staffing gaps and pressure to grow revenue. He built an initial AI agent called Alfred for a couple of properties; it answered guest questions and helped with check-ins and check-outs, and Shariff said online reviews improved at both properties within 90 days.
Dextr later moved into incoming calls with a voice reservations agent called Daisy. Shariff found that answering a caller's question about a reservation, or about something they could not find on a booking site, could lead to a booking, and he came to see the calls as a source of revenue. One large hotel working with Dextr handles $100,000 to $300,000 a month in bookings through the voice agent, according to Shariff.
The startup has expanded into agents for group bookings and staff management, and aims to connect them so that information gathered in one part of a hotel prompts action in another. In one example, a guest management agent could pass along a guest's decision to decline housekeeping so an operations agent could adjust staff schedules. In another, a guest arriving late at a property with no overnight front desk employee could call, have Daisy verify the reservation and get room-entry instructions, with Daisy and Alfred working together. Shariff estimated an overnight front desk shift could cost a property $70,000 to $80,000 a year in a market such as California.
Shariff pointed to three things that distinguish Dextr from other hotel AI tools: connecting agents to serve multiple use cases, sending engineers to work directly with customers to identify useful applications and link agents to existing systems, and letting employees direct agents by text or voice through a companion called Doss. Dextr integrates with property management systems including Oracle Hospitality, OPERA Cloud, StayNtouch, Cloudbeds and Hostaway.
Dextr says its agents handle more than 1 million interactions a month across hundreds of hotels, with customers ranging from a 21-room property to one with 550 rooms. They include independent hotels and properties operating under the Hilton, Wyndham, Best Western and IHG brands, as well as reservation centers, vacation rentals and outdoor hospitality businesses. The company charges a subscription based on the property and the agents used, with usage-based fees for some agents, and Shariff said annual recurring revenue has been growing about 20% to 30% month over month. Dextr plans to use the funding to hire more customer-facing engineers, expand integrations and develop additional agents; its team has grown from three people a year ago to 21.
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