{"id":356687,"date":"2026-02-26T04:32:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T04:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/356687\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T04:32:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T04:32:06","slug":"y-combinator-grad-and-ai-insurance-brokerage-harper-raises-47m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/356687\/","title":{"rendered":"Y Combinator grad and AI insurance brokerage Harper raises $47M"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dakotah Rice is stepping back into the founder\u2019s seat.\u00a0On Wednesday, he announced that his new company, the AI-native insurance brokerage Harper, has raised $46.8 million in a combined Series A and seed round.<\/p>\n

Previously, he founded the investment company Poolit, which closed in 2023. He spoke openly to TechCrunch about the collapse of that company, saying he never figured out how to make it profitable.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy ego made it hard to accept the failure,\u201d he told TechCrunch. \u201cIn hindsight, I should have shut it down a year earlier.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For his next company, he went back to his roots. His family owned an insurance brokerage, and he remembered all the hassles that came when founders like himself walked through the doors, trying to insure their businesses. \u201cI hated insurance,\u201d he continued, \u201cswore I\u2019d never end up in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But then he had an idea. At first, he and Tushar Nair, a longtime friend and former CTO of Poolit, thought about building AI tools for existing brokerages. Then they decided to just use that technology to build an AI-native insurance brokerage and call it Harper,<\/a> after Rice\u2019s mother\u2019s maiden name.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Launched in 2024, Harper is part of a trend YC recently wrote about (Harper took part in the YC W25 batch). The YC blog wrote that the <\/a>future of agencies \u201cwill look more like software companies, with software margins.\u201d That\u2019s exactly what Harper is \u2014 an almost fully autonomous licensed commercial insurance agency. It matches small- to mid-sized businesses with more than 160 insurance carriers to assist with workers\u2019 compensation, as well as general and professional liability.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat often takes a traditional broker five to seven days, we can often do in one to two,\u201d Rice, the company\u2019s CEO, said. He said a typical sales team at a human-led brokerage handles 20 to 30 deals a month, but AI enables Harper to handle more than 1,000 customers a month. Harper has more than 5,000 customers to date, he continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBoston, MA
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJune 9, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cAI handles the operational weight. Submission routing, underwriter follow-ups, document collection, pipeline management,\u201d Rice continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Investors in the company include YC and Peak XV Partners, and its Series A round was led by Emergence Capital. <\/p>\n

Rice thinks of nearly all brokerages as Harper\u2019s competition. He said that work remains very fragmented, with big players and everyone else running on \u201cemail and spreadsheets.\u201d There are, of course, other AI-native brokerages in this space, like Gyde<\/a>, as well as companies that use AI tools, like FurtherAI or Vantel (both of which are also YC alums).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rice said what makes Harper different is that it hopes to target middle America. \u201cThe real-world businesses,\u201d he said, \u201clike daycares, manufacturers, car dealerships, local bars and restaurants.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fresh funding will be used to build out Harper\u2019s engineering team and help grow the brand. The second time in the game, he has big dreams for this company.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to make it simple for them to do their core work, and we basically do everything else over time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This piece was updated to clarify the total funding amount. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dakotah Rice is stepping back into the founder\u2019s seat.\u00a0On Wednesday, he announced that his new company, the AI-native…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[178],"tags":[79,18,236,18315,19,17,15253],"class_list":["post-356687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-harper","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-y-combinator"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}