Torch

Torch: Leadership Coaching Built by Executive Coaches

Torch is a leadership coaching and development platform combining human coaches with AI and organizational intelligence tools. The company was founded in 2017 in San Francisco by Cameron Yarbrough, an executive coach, and Keegan Walden, a psychologist (Tracxn; Josh Bersin, 2026). Heather Conklin now serves as CEO. Torch has raised roughly $40 to $79 million in funding across multiple rounds from investors including Y Combinator and Norwest Venture Partners, and reports around 350 employees and roughly $24.8 to $71.8 million in annual revenue depending on the source and date (Tracxn; Getlatka; Prospeo, 2026). Torch has grown through acquisition, including Everwise, a mentoring network, and, in 2025, Praxis Labs, whose co-founders Elise Smith and Heather Shen joined Torch as Head of AI Growth and Head of AI Product respectively (People of Color in Tech, 2025).

What Torch does

Torch pairs human coaches, many of them doctoral-qualified psychologists and therapists, with an AI agent called Spark and organizational intelligence data, aiming to translate a company's strategic intent into concrete leadership development for individual leaders and teams (Torch "About Us," 2026). The platform provides leadership assessments, one-on-one virtual coaching, iterative feedback, personalized development plans, and dashboards giving HR leaders visibility into coaching engagement and impact. Following the Praxis Labs acquisition, Torch has also incorporated immersive, simulation-based practice and AI-driven feedback into its leadership development offering.

Where it fits

Torch serves mid-market and enterprise organizations, with named clients including Airbnb, Reddit, and Tripadvisor (Torch, 2026). It's a fit for talent and HR leaders who want leadership development that blends genuine human coaching expertise with technology-driven measurement and scale, rather than choosing between purely human coaching (harder to scale) or purely digital tools (lacking depth).

Why this matters for people leaders

Executive coaching has historically been reserved for the most senior leaders precisely because human coaching doesn't scale easily or cheaply. Torch's founding premise, building software and AI specifically to extend and measure what skilled human coaches do, rather than replace them, is an attempt to widen access to real coaching depth without losing what makes coaching effective in the first place. For organizations focused on Culture, Performance, and Retention, that combination matters because leadership quality is one of the most direct levers on whether teams stay engaged and whether performance actually improves, and a platform that can extend real coaching further down the org chart reaches more of the managers whose behavior shapes those outcomes day to day.

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