Stride

Stride is an AI engineering consultancy that builds custom software, agentic workflows and modernized legacy applications alongside clients’ engineering teams. Its services include AI adoption assessments and practical team training, with expertise in healthcare and financial services. AI Token Cost Optimization connects spending to outcomes such as resolved inquiries, combining model routing, prompt and context restructuring, and evaluations to test changes before deployment.

Founded in 2014 by Debbie Madden, now chairwoman, Stride is led by CEO Francisco Martin. Its applied engineering work includes rebuilding Avila Science’s Ava patient-support assistant with LangGraph and Claude Sonnet. That architecture lets the model propose actions and call tools while restricting changes to historical records. Retry logic handles failed tool calls, uncertain interactions escalate to human reviewers, and a custom evaluation framework tests conversation behavior.

Stride delivers through fixed-scope engagements; its cost-optimization service hands dashboards, alerting and review gates over to the client’s team. In July 2026, the company reported 175+ clients across 350 engagements since its founding. Its earlier Alaris preferred-equity investment ended through a completed preferred-equity redemption in July 2024, when Stride redeemed all outstanding preferred units held by Alaris.