Avatar Buddy is building an AI company that acts more like a partner than a product – Refresh Miami

It’s a pattern Stephanie Sylvestre saw time and time again inside enterprise companies.

Powerful tools were being bought. Big promises were being made. And then, somewhere between rollout and reality, everything stalled.

“Most organizations don’t need another shiny AI tool,” Sylvestre told Refresh Miami. “They need someone to walk alongside them and help make AI real in their business, function by function.”

That frustration became the foundation of Avatar Buddy, a Miami-based startup that positions itself as a Managed AI-as-a-Service partner, designing and operating custom AI agents that live inside a customer’s actual workflows, data, and culture.

“We’re not a chatbot company,” she said. “We’re not a one-size-fits-all platform. We work side by side with teams to lead their AI transformation.”

Over the past year, that clarity reshaped how Avatar Buddy showed up in the market. The company repositioned itself around three ideas: function-specific AI agents built for roles like grant writing or operations; small language models and private data vaults that keep customer data secure and under client control; and human AI advisors who guide teams before, during, and after implementation.

It also forced internal discipline. Avatar Buddy moved from ad-hoc sales to a structured pipeline, implemented a CRM, standardized lead generation, and hired two experienced sales executives. By the end of 2025, the company had built roughly $1.3 million in qualified opportunities for 2026.

But the real validation didn’t come from dashboards. It came from customers.

One client, ELC, used Avatar Buddy to help check their students’ portfolios, saving 700 hours of manual labor.

Another customer, the Black Archives, deployed Avatar Buddy’s Grant Writer agent. “With Grant Writer we received $75K more in grants this year,” the organization said.

“These are exactly the kinds of proof points that tell us we’re building something useful, not just impressive,” Sylvestre said.

By the end of 2025, Avatar Buddy had reached 32 active customers, maintained 97.5 percent retention, and processed roughly half a billion tokens across its platform. Annual recurring revenue increased 60 percent year over year, with profitability now close in sight.

At the same time, the startup kicked off a $500,000 fundraising round in the third quarter of 2025, targeting a close by March 31, 2026.

The company is also expanding internationally.

“We are in three countries – the U.S., Belize, and Ghana – and we’re on track to open in South Africa this quarter,” Sylvestre said.

In Belize, Avatar Buddy is working with the Ministry of Education on an AI archivist that serves Belizean history and speaks Creole. In Ghana, the company has configured its AI to help rural farmers decide what to plant based on village-level conditions and seasons.

“It pulls up your location and says, ‘You’re in this village, this is what you should plant right now,’” she said.

If 2025 was about foundations, 2026 is about execution.

“With the non-financial pieces in place, now it’s about revenue,” Sylvestre said. “We have to close deals, shorten our sales cycle, and expand the number of AI agents per customer.”

And then there’s what excites her most.

“Digital twins and preserving history – that’s what really gets me excited,” Sylvestre said. “The best part of my job is interviewing people and listening to their story. Now anybody can have a conversation with that person regardless of where they are.”

“That’s why I keep going.”

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