Funds and Hires for Hybrid Research Platform Strella

In New York, AI-powered customer research platform Strella has raised $14 million in Series A funding, with which to expand its platform to mobile customer research, and accelerate the growth of its engineering team to build more tools using its AI capabilities. The firm has also added three new faces.

Strella uses an AI moderator to conduct interviews, analyze responses and synthesize findings in real time, promising rapid and low cost insights versus traditional methods - however it's AI solution is designed to complement human researchers, allowing users to combine the two types of interview in the same system and/or on the same project. The company was founded in 2023 by CEO and former Bain & Co consultant Lydia Hylton (pictured below) and COO Priya Krishnan (above), formerly at Fitbit and Doordash. It raised seed funding and emerged from stealth a year ago.

'We built Strella to make research faster, smarter, and more human,' says Hilton, 'proving that teams no longer have to choose between speed and depth. By combining AI with human insight, we're creating a new standard where qualitative research is continuous, scalable, and empowers confident decisions at every level of an organization.'

The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Decibel Partners, Bain Future Backed Ventures, MVP Ventures and 645 Ventures.

Strella has also made a number of recent hires, including Dan Oakes, founder of Startup Sales Consulting, as a Sales Advisor; former Salesbiz podcaster Mike Petrosyan as Founding Account Executive; and Hunter Duzac as a Software Engineer.

Web site: www.strella.io .