Outmarket AI raises $34.5 million in Series B round to develop artificial intelligence platform for insurance

Ande, which has emerged from stealth mode, announced the raising of over $52 million in funding, combining seed and Series A rounds. Leaders of this round included Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Duration Ventures, and Sierra Ventures; Bain Capital Ventures also participated in the financing.

The company's main goal is to service large enterprises' expenses for corporate events. These expenses include client dinners, team outings, sporting events, catering, and corporate gifts. Enterprises are estimated to spend around $325 billion annually on such activities.

Despite significant spending, the booking process remains fragmented across various systems. Ande solves this problem by integrating all these activities into a single corporate platform. Employees can book experiences while finance and legal departments maintain control over expenditures. The company spent two and a half years digitizing venue data.

The platform uses agent workflows to automate administrative tasks. These workflows can identify suitable venues, route requests for approval, and manage contracts. Furthermore, they support payments and expense reconciliation, significantly reducing manual work for teams managing corporate entertainment programs.

Ande provides a shared workspace for employees involved in corporate entertainment. Executive assistants and office managers can handle requests alongside marketing teams. Managers can also participate in approval processes through the same platform. Then, AI agents advance requests through stages of approval, signing, and payment.

Currently, the platform is used by over 60 enterprises. Among Ande's clients are Cloudflare, Salesforce, McGraw Hill, and Netskope. Other clients include Navan, Sigma Computing, Monday.com, Workato, and Semgrep. These clients account for over $400 million in annual entertainment spending through Ande, with clients reporting savings of 12% to 15%.

The platform also provides teams with better transparency regarding their entertainment programs. Ande's model addresses both sides of each transaction: companies gain procurement infrastructure, and venues gain access to corporate buyers. The company has also trained its AI model for enterprise-specific entertainment workflows.

Ande's network includes over 93,000 entertainment venues, and currently, more than 1,600 hotel properties are direct partners of the platform. Partners include Altamarea Group, Che Fico, and Gracious Hospitality. Other partners include JKS and The Mina Group. Tao Group Hospitality and Wolfgang Puck are also among its hospitality sector partners. Ande provides these companies access to corporate clients through a single distribution channel, as venues traditionally lacked specialized corporate sales networks.

Ande aims to fill this gap through its marketplace. The platform allows venues to offer their services to corporate buyers and interact with companies and manage transactions through the network. This forms a two-sided model for Ande.

Enterprises gain easier access to venues, and the hospitality industry gains corporate demand. Ande's new funding will be directed towards further developing its native AI platform, as well as expanding its network among corporate buyers and venues.

CEO Lohit Sarma emphasized that entertainment plays an important role in business relationships, highlighting its significance for culture, sales, and client interaction. Venture investors also see opportunities in this fragmented market.

Arif Janmohamed from Lightspeed Venture Partners described Ande as a bridge between companies and venues. Alex Bard, Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures, noted Sarma's experience in the enterprise space and the founder's ambition. Ande positions itself as the infrastructure for corporate entertainment, and its AI agents are designed to reduce the administrative burden across the entire booking process. The company's growth will depend on expanding both sides of its network.

Veridion has successfully raised $20 million to scale its artificial intelligence-based business analytics platform. The funding round was led by Hoxton Ventures, with participation from existing investors, including Underline Ventures, OTB Ventures, Gapminder, Day One Capital, and Launchub Ventures.

The funds will be used for product development and international expansion into several strategic markets. Furthermore, the company plans to significantly increase its staff in the US as demand from American clients continues to grow.

More than seventy percent of the company's revenue currently comes from US clients. Veridion is strengthening its presence in North America and forging closer ties with American institutions, which is supported by this funding for commercial growth.

Founded in 2019, Veridion has developed a live AI-driven business graph that covers companies worldwide. This platform provides continuously updated information on enterprises across various industries and geographical regions.

The company's digital twin currently includes over 640 million businesses globally. Veridion analyzes billions of digital signals to maintain and update this extensive business dataset. These signals include company websites, public registries, and regulatory documents from different markets.

Product catalogs, social profiles, and news sources are also integrated into the platform. The system uses this information to create a constantly updated view of companies and their commercial activities.

The platform can provide market analysis 52 times faster than traditional sources and covers more than 30 times more companies than many standard business analytics systems. This approach is aimed at organizations that require accurate and up-to-date commercial information.

The company is expanding amid growing volatility in global commercial conditions. Traditional business analytics often relies on quarterly or annual updates, which can pose problems during rapid changes or unexpected company disruptions.

Enterprises can be formed, fail, relocate, or change their risk profiles in much shorter timeframes. Veridion claims that its real-time data helps organizations identify these changes earlier. The platform can also show connections between suppliers and customers affected by changing commercial conditions.

This capability becomes critical when disruptions affect multiple companies in one supply chain. For example, during disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz, users were able to identify vulnerable enterprises and commercial links.

Veridion's clients collectively represent a market capitalization of nearly $2 trillion. As part of its expansion strategy, the company is now dedicating more resources to the US market. The Series A funding gives Veridion the necessary momentum to accelerate product development and strengthen ties with American institutions.

The company currently employs over 60 people in Europe and North America, but it plans to double its team in the US soon. This growth will help attract more clients and establish itself in the American market.

Hoxton Ventures noted that Veridion is transforming the methods of building business analytics. The investor emphasized that the real-time updating data model is a key part of the company's approach. Veridion believes that real-time information allows businesses to react sooner to changing commercial conditions.

The company's technology aims to replace static information with a continuously updated view of global business. The secured funding will provide Veridion with additional resources to expand the platform and develop new features, as well as support efforts to make live business analytics more accessible worldwide.

Factory has successfully raised $200 million in a new funding round, achieving a valuation of $5 billion. Investors in this round include Blackstone, Khosla Ventures, and Sequoia Capital. Insight Partners, Evantic Capital, and Sound Ventures also participated.

Factory was founded in 2023 by Matan Greenberg and Eno Reyes. Other investors included NEA, Mantis VC, and Clearlake. The round also attracted angel investors, including Nico Rosberg, Brad Gerstner, and Mark Benioff.

The new funding increases the company's total capital raised to over $400 million. This represents significant growth compared to the $1.5 billion valuation set in April. Thus, in five months, Factory's valuation has more than tripled; previously, the company had raised $150 million at that same valuation.

The latest capital raise reflects growing enterprise demand for autonomous software development tools. The San Francisco-based company aims to increase the degree of autonomy in software development. Its platform enables large enterprises to create, test, and maintain software using artificial intelligence agents throughout the entire development lifecycle.

Factory differs from platforms focused on individual coding agents because it provides enterprises with a unified system for managing software development. The platform allows companies to control the training process of their 'software factory,' as well as manage models and system deployment. Factory can operate through its managed cloud infrastructure, or clients can deploy it on-premises or in fully isolated environments, giving enterprises greater control over AI-driven development.

The company reports that its platform is used by hundreds of thousands of developers. Factory's clients include Nvidia, Blackstone, Royal Bank of Canada, Palo Alto Networks, and Adobe. This growing client portfolio underscores the increased interest from the corporate sector in AI-powered software development.

Enterprises are increasingly using AI to boost engineering productivity. Factory believes that companies are moving from using individual coding assistants to building broader software factories around autonomous systems. Matan Greenberg noted: 'Major enterprises worldwide are transitioning from individual coding agents to software factories,' adding that clients confirm the potential for rearchitecting software development systems, although the company is still in the early stages of this transition.

Factory's strategy is focused on creating autonomous software factories that operate continuously under human supervision. Enterprises can regulate measurable outcomes while AI performs development tasks. The company competes in the rapidly growing AI coding market. Factory plans to use the new capital to support further growth, focusing particularly on platform expansion and adoption within the corporate sector.