Harper Raises $47M to Transform Insurance with AI
▼ Summary
– Dakotah Rice’s new AI-native insurance brokerage, Harper, has raised $46.8 million in a combined seed and Series A round.
– Harper is an almost fully autonomous agency that uses AI to match small-to-mid-sized businesses with insurance carriers, significantly speeding up processes compared to traditional brokers.
– The company, part of Y Combinator’s W’25 batch, has over 5,000 customers and aims to serve “real-world businesses” in middle America, like daycares and manufacturers.
– Rice previously founded the investment company Poolit, which failed, and he cites that experience and his family’s insurance background as influences for Harper.
– Harper plans to use its funding to build its engineering team and grow its brand, with a long-term vision to become a comprehensive back-office platform for entrepreneurs.
Dakotah Rice is returning to the entrepreneurial arena with a significant new venture. His latest company, Harper, an AI-native insurance brokerage, has secured $46.8 million in a combined seed and Series A funding round. This capital injection signals strong investor confidence in using artificial intelligence to overhaul the traditionally cumbersome commercial insurance sector.
Rice’s journey back to founding follows the closure of his previous investment company, Poolit. He reflects candidly on that experience, acknowledging that his ego prolonged its lifespan beyond what was practical. “My ego made it hard to accept the failure,” he admitted, noting he should have ended the venture sooner. For his next act, he turned to a familiar industry. His family once owned an insurance brokerage, and he vividly recalls the frustrations founders faced when trying to insure their businesses. Ironically, he once despised the field, vowing never to enter it.
The concept for Harper emerged from a desire to fix those very pain points. Initially, Rice and his longtime friend Tushar Nair, former CTO of Poolit, considered developing AI tools for existing brokerages. They quickly pivoted, deciding instead to build an entirely new, AI-driven brokerage from the ground up. Named after Rice’s mother’s maiden name, Harper launched in 2024 and recently participated in Y Combinator’s W25 batch. The company embodies a trend highlighted by YC, which predicts the future of agencies will resemble software companies with correspondingly high margins.
Harper operates as a nearly fully autonomous, licensed commercial insurance agency. It connects small and mid-sized businesses with a network of over 160 insurance carriers, specializing in areas like workers’ compensation, general liability, and professional liability. The efficiency gains are substantial. CEO Rice states that processes which typically take a traditional broker five to seven days can often be completed by Harper’s system in just one or two. Where a human-led sales team might manage 20 to 30 deals monthly, Harper’s AI infrastructure can handle more than 1,000 customers in the same timeframe. The company already serves over 5,000 customers.
The operational backbone is entirely AI-driven. “AI handles the operational weight,” Rice explained. This includes critical tasks like submission routing, follow-ups with underwriters, document collection, and pipeline management, freeing human experts to focus on more complex cases. The recent funding round was led by Emergence Capital, with participation from Y Combinator and Peak XV Partners. In total, Harper has raised $54 million in a remarkably short period of under two months.
Rice views nearly all traditional brokerages as competition, describing a fragmented industry still reliant on outdated tools like email and spreadsheets. While other AI-focused players like Gyde, FurtherAI, and Vantel exist, Rice believes Harper’s differentiation lies in its target market. The company aims to serve “middle America” and “real-world businesses” such as daycare centers, manufacturing firms, car dealerships, and local bars and restaurants.
The new capital will primarily fuel engineering team expansion and brand growth. With this second chance at building a company, Rice has ambitious long-term plans. He envisions Harper evolving beyond insurance to become a central hub for entrepreneurs. “We want to become the voice for entrepreneurs, starting with their insurance, but over time becoming a focal point for all types of things related to risk, compliance, and their entire back office,” he said. The ultimate goal is to simplify the administrative burden for business owners, allowing them to concentrate on their core work while Harper manages the complexities in the background.
(Source: TechCrunch)
