When Sajid Shariff returned to the Bay Area in 2024, he reconnected with folks he knew from his years working in hospitality. He requested what had modified since he left the business through the pandemic. The reply, he mentioned, was that motels have been nonetheless challenged by rising labor prices, staffing gaps and stress to usher in extra income.
So Shariff supplied to construct an AI agent for a few properties. The first, referred to as Alfred, answered visitor questions and helped with check-ins and check-outs. Within 90 days, he mentioned, on-line opinions improved at each properties. He then started deploying it at extra motels, earlier than deciding that visitor messaging was just one a part of the chance.
That work led him to staff up with Scott Arnold to begin Dextr AI, the San Francisco startup they based in July 2025. The firm is now rising from stealth with $6.7 million in seed funding to construct brokers that deal with reservations, visitor requests, employees coordination and different resort duties. Elevation Capital led the increase, with participation from Foundation Capital. The spherical marks Dextr’s first institutional financing.
From visitor requests to bookings
After early visitor administration deployments, Dextr turned to incoming calls with a voice reservations agent referred to as Daisy. If a caller has a query a couple of reservation or one thing they’ll’t discover on a reserving website, answering it might result in a reserving, Shariff discovered. As motels started utilizing Daisy, he realized that the cellphone calls have been “leading to revenue.”
In truth, right this moment, one giant resort that Dextr works with handles $100,000 to $300,000 a month in bookings by the voice agent, based on Shariff.
Dextr has since expanded into brokers for group bookings, employees administration and different work. Its objective is to attach these brokers so info gathered in a single a part of a resort can immediate motion in one other. For instance, if a visitor declines housekeeping, a visitor administration agent might cross that info to an operations agent in order that employees schedules could possibly be adjusted accordingly.
Another use case might contain a property working with out an in a single day entrance desk worker. A visitor arriving late might name the resort, have Daisy confirm their reservation and obtain directions for getting into their room. Daisy and Alfred, Dextr’s visitor administration agent, would work collectively to deal with the arrival.
For some properties, utilizing brokers to deal with late check-ins might take away the necessity to employees an in a single day entrance desk shift. Shariff estimated that such a shift might price a property from $70,000 to $80,000 a 12 months in a market reminiscent of California.
“It was very hard to hire for these shifts to begin with,” he mentioned.
Building ROI
Shariff says combining brokers is only one of three issues that set Dextr aside from different resort AI instruments. An agent that solutions calls or messages can deal with a specific job, he mentioned, however connecting it with different brokers opens up extra makes use of for a property.
The second distinction, based on Shariff, is Dextr’s strategy to getting the brokers working. Putting them to work takes greater than putting in software program, he mentioned. Every resort differs from one other in the way it manages reservations, assigns employees, and handles visitor requests. So Dextr sends engineers to work straight with prospects, establish the place brokers could possibly be helpful after which join them to present programs. Those engineers keep concerned because the property places the brokers to make use of, he mentioned, and work to seek out functions which have the potential to ship a return on funding.
“Every property, every operation is different in this space,” he mentioned. Dextr integrates with property administration programs together with Oracle Hospitality, OPERA Cloud, StayNtouch, Cloudbeds and Hostaway.
The third is how workers use the brokers. They can direct them by textual content or voice by a companion referred to as Doss, with out having to be taught a sequence of steps in a brand new software program system. Shariff mentioned frequent turnover makes it tough for motels to coach employees on sophisticated instruments and retain that information when workers go away. With Doss, “you can call it, you can talk to it, you can text it,” he mentioned.
Hotels and extra
Dextr says its brokers now deal with greater than 1 million interactions a month throughout a whole lot of motels. The startup’s prospects vary from a 21-room property to 1 with 550 rooms. They embody impartial motels and properties working underneath the Hilton, Wyndham, Best Western and IHG manufacturers, in addition to reservation facilities, trip leases and outside hospitality companies.
The startup works straight with the house owners and operators of these branded properties, Shariff mentioned, and is starting its first direct relationship with a resort model that he declined to call. It additionally works with resort and property administration corporations, in addition to reservation facilities, trip leases and outside hospitality venues reminiscent of campgrounds, RV parks, lodges and golf programs.
The firm expenses a subscription based mostly on the property and the brokers it makes use of, with usage-based charges for some brokers. Shariff declined to reveal income, profitability or the spherical’s valuation. After spending a lot of final 12 months on pilot tasks, he mentioned, Dextr started rising extra rapidly this spring. He mentioned annual recurring income has been rising about 20% to 30% month over month, although he didn’t disclose onerous figures.
Dextr plans to make use of its new funding to rent extra engineers who work straight with prospects, develop its software program integrations, and develop extra brokers. Its staff has grown from three folks a 12 months in the past to 21.
“What stood out immediately was Sajid and Scott’s execution. Dextr scaled to [hundreds of] contracted properties and meaningful ARR without raising a single dollar,” he wrote through e mail. “In a space where most AI companies are still searching for product-market fit, Dextr had customers, zero churn, and a clear ROI story. That combination of founder quality and early traction is exactly what we look for at Elevation.”
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