Relay raises $36M led by International Paper

How much did Relay raise and who led the round?

Relay said on Sept. 30, 2026 that it raised $36 million in new funding, a round it described as significantly oversubscribed and one that brings its total capital raised to more than $90 million. International Paper led the financing, while new investors included clients of Cerity Partners, Harmonic Growth Partners, and Thayer Investment Partners. Earlier lead investors G2 Venture Partners and Wind River Ventures also increased their investments in the round, according to the company’s announcement on PR Newswire.

The company positions itself as a communications and operational intelligence platform for frontline workforces. Relay says it serves the 80% of the global workforce that does not sit behind a desk, and that its products are designed for physical operations rather than office workflows. In the company’s framing, many existing tools are either analog or built for desk-based workers, leaving frontline teams underserved.

What does Relay’s product do?

Relay says workers use its system in a familiar push-to-talk radio workflow: pick up a device, wear it during the shift, and speak into it. Behind that interface, Relay says the platform combines cloud communications, AI, real-time translation, location awareness, and automated workflows in purpose-built hardware. The company also says its system captures what frontline workers say and do and turns it into action inside the systems customers already use.

Relay said the new funding will accelerate its software and AI platform, including an insights layer and an agentic layer for querying shift data and acting on it. The company also said the capital will support worker safety solutions, enterprise integrations, next-generation frontline hardware, expansion in industrial and hospitality markets, and hiring.

Why did International Paper invest in Relay?

Relay CEO and co-founder Chris Chuang said International Paper is both an investor and a customer that has seen Relay’s value in demanding industrial environments. International Paper executive Keith Townsend said Relay helps in loud industrial settings and improves shift transitions, operating processes, safety and maintenance responses, and connectivity with operational systems. Townsend said the company invested because it sees Relay as an important part of its modern industrial technology stack.

Chuang also pointed to Thayer’s involvement as bringing perspective from hotel brands already using Relay across thousands of properties. Thayer’s managing partner said Relay is increasingly becoming a standard in hospitality, especially in complex luxury hotel, resort, and casino properties. The company said the round’s oversubscription reflected broad interest from industry participants in its frontline workflow product.

What scale and retention metrics did Relay disclose?

Relay said it serves hundreds of thousands of frontline workers and works with approximately 10% of the Fortune 500, including multiple companies with more than 10,000 users on Relay. The company reported 99% gross revenue retention and 130% net revenue retention among enterprise customers, figures that suggest strong expansion within its installed base if those self-reported metrics hold.

Relay also said its platform supports 35 languages and processes more than one billion data points weekly across nearly 10,000 deployment sites in manufacturing, hospitality, healthcare, and other sectors. The company said it has appeared on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for three consecutive years and was recently named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in America for the third straight year, ranking No. 830.

Relay’s own cited research helps explain the problem it is trying to address. In a survey of 500 manufacturing professionals, 57% said their most important operational communication happens out loud, in person, and only 17% said almost everything frontline workers notice and flag ends up in a formal system, log, or report. Relay calls the loss of that spoken information “signal evaporation.” In the same survey, 79% said communication breakdowns cause delays, rework, or missed handoffs at least a few times a month. Relay said Dynata conducted the survey in August 2026 among U.S. organizations with 500 or more employees.

What comes next for Relay?

Relay said the new capital will help it push further into industrial and hospitality deployments while building out software, AI, hardware, and enterprise integrations around frontline operations. The company said it is focused on turning spoken, shift-level information into structured action inside customer systems. With a customer base it says spans hundreds of thousands of workers and nearly 10,000 sites, the next phase appears to be about widening adoption and adding more automation on top of its existing radio-style workflow.