According to GeekWire, Seattle startup Ambassador has raised $7 million in a funding round that coincides with the launch of its new AI layer, HiroAI. The company, which was acquired from Intrado in 2021, builds software to help marketing and revenue teams manage customer referrals, surveys, loyalty programs, and email outreach from a single platform. It currently works with over 200 global customers, including large enterprises in telecom, fintech, and B2B software. The round was led by former Zipwhip executives, including co-founder John Larson, who is now Ambassador’s chief strategy officer and called this his “personal biggest bet” as an investor. Other backers include former Barclays chairman Archibald Cox Jr. and VentureUs. This brings Ambassador’s total funding to $11 million, and the company has 22 employees.
The AI layer that doesn’t replace people
Here’s the thing about this launch: Ambassador is being pretty careful with its AI positioning. They’re not selling a fully autonomous system that makes decisions for you. Instead, HiroAI is framed as an analytical layer that surfaces insights and recommends actions to improve customer retention and revenue. The bet is that marketing teams, who are likely dealing with smaller budgets and leaner staff, don’t want another disconnected tool. They want their existing stack of engagement tools—the referrals, the surveys, the emails—to actually talk to each other and tell them what to do next. CEO Geoff McDonald’s claim about building “the most connected AI feedback network” is a big one, but it points directly at the huge, messy problem of data living in silos. Can an AI layer truly bridge that gap?
The manual work AI is replacing first
It’s interesting to see where Ambassador is using AI internally. McDonald mentioned it’s replacing manual work like lead scoring and customer outreach. That’s a telling detail. It’s the classic, often tedious, operational grunt work that sucks up time. Automating that internally lets them focus resources on product and sales. But it also serves as a proof point for their customers. They’re basically saying, “We eat our own dog food, and it frees us up to do more strategic work.” The challenge, of course, is that one company’s “strategic work” is another company’s “future automation target.” The line between recommendation and automation gets blurry fast.
Why the Zipwhip connection matters
The heavy involvement from former Zipwhip execs isn’t just a fun Seattle tech trivia fact. It’s a signal. Zipwhip built a massive business in cloud-based texting before its acquisition. That team knows about scaling B2B communication software and navigating the enterprise sales cycle. Having that experience and capital deeply embedded in Ambassador provides more than just money; it’s operational credibility. When your chief strategy officer is making his biggest personal bet ever on your company, that’s a serious vote of confidence. It suggests they see a scalable path forward in this crowded space of customer engagement platforms.
The bigger picture for feedback tools
So what’s the real play here? Ambassador is tapping into two major trends: consolidation and actionable AI. Businesses are exhausted by point solutions. They want platforms. And they’re increasingly skeptical of AI that’s just a fancy chatbot. They want AI that analyzes their specific data and tells them, “Here’s why churn spiked last quarter, and here are three campaigns you should run to fix it.” The success of HiroAI won’t be about the AI being smart in a vacuum. It’ll be about how well it connects data from Ambassador’s own tools and potentially other systems. That’s the hard part. If they can truly create that connected network, they move from being a feedback tool to being a central nervous system for customer revenue. That’s a much bigger, and stickier, proposition.
