Cuffe grew up in all three cities, while his father worked at Lloyd’s of London, the oldest and most prestigious insurance market in the world. He spent years in startups and came full circle: Today, Cuffe is the CEO and cofounder of Pace, an agent AI startup focused on insurance operations, especially around business process outsourcing (or BPOs).

“The Internet is really the catalyst for outsourcing,” Cuffe said. “In the 1990s, 2000s, for the first time, you could do this work wherever you were and send it back. Now we’re seeing the same thing, where all this work that was outsourced offshore can now be outsourced to AI.”

Pace—founded in 2024 by Cuffe—counts Prudential, The Mutual Group, and Newfront among its customers. The startup just raised $10 million in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital, luck exclusively learned. In insurance, the BPO market is about $70 billion in annual spending, and if you include the broader financial services operations around the industry, that number reaches $400 billion, Cuffe said.

“That’s the segment of the market that Pace really addresses,” said Bryan Schreier, the Sequoia partner who led the deal, who worked with Cuffe on his last startup, Cheer, which was sold to Retool in 2020. “The thesis behind Pace is that the next wave of disruption in the insurance operations segment—this $100 billion market—is completely AI because it is.”

Each in their own way, both Schreier and Cuffe point out something I’ve thought about many times: That AI is an amazing reader of vast amounts of material. It is especially suited to tasks that involve mountains of documents and technical verbiage. This is why the “AI moment” has hit the legal industry, with the rise of mega-unicorns like Harvey and Legora. Cuffe argues that this is why an “AI era” is clearly coming for insurance.

“Legal was taken first because copilots are useful, and there are a lot of people doing that work,” Cuffe said. luck. “In insurance, the tasks are on a much, much higher scale – hundreds of thousands or millions of submissions, tens of thousands of claims, for some of these insurers. They have to process that…

see you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: [email protected]
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VENTURE CAPITAL

– Recursive Technologiesa Palo Alto, Calif.-based AI lab, raises $300 million in Series A funding. Lightspeed Venture Colleagues led the round and was joined by Happy Trades, Sequoia capitaland so on.

– Upwinda cloud security company based in San Francisco, has raised $250 million in Series B funding. Bessemer Venture Colleagues led the round and was joined by Salesforce Trades, PICTURE capitaland existing investors.

– Synthesisa London, UK-based platform designed for generating videos using AI from text prompts, has raised $200 million in Series E funding. Google Trades led the round and was joined by Evantic, Hedosophia, NVentures, Accel, Kleiner Perkinsand so on.

– Memcycoa Tel Aviv, Israel-based digital risk protection platform, has raised $37 million in Series A funding. NAventures, E. Leon Jimenezand Q group led the round and was joined by others.

– VISITORSan AI-powered property operations platform based in New York City, has secured $22 million in Series B funding. Susquehanna Growth Equity led the round and was joined by Vertex Trades Israel, Anfieldand Cover Trades.

– Barnwell Bioa New York-based animal health and behavioral intelligence company, has secured $6 million in seed funding. Twelve Below led the round and was joined by Max Trades, Dorm quarto FUNDS, Banter capitaland so on.

– Midshipa San Francisco-based AI data automation platform, has raised $4.2 million in seed funding. Costanoa Trades led the round and was joined by Seguin Trades and angel investors.

– The plan AIa Toronto, Canada-based provider of AI voice agent and phone services designed for e-commerce businesses, has raised $3.3 million in funding. RTP Whole world led the round and was joined by Saastr FUNDS, on Tradesand so on.

– Lucenda New York City-based AI platform designed for data center optimization, has raised $3.3 million in seed funding. remarkable Trades Climate led the round and was joined by Mitsubishi Electric ones RENEWAL FUNDS, NEW Climate Trades, Avestaand Step change.

– Billdra Montreal, Canada-based AI-powered operating system for construction, has raised $3.2 million in seed funding. white Star capital led the round and was joined by deer way Trades, Capital of Desjardins, asterXand Formentera capital.

– Thingsa Dubai, UAE-based insurance and prevention platform designed for cloud outage risk, has raised $1.8 million in pre-seed funding from This is one capital, Suhail Trades, In addition VCand so on.

PRIVATE EQUITY

– CVC agreed to take Marathona credit manager based in New York City, up to $1.2 billion.

EXITS

– Leidos agreed to take FAITH Solutions groupa Lisle, Ill.-based utility engineering and consulting company, from Kohlbergfor approximately $2.4 billion.

– KPS capital Colleagues Obtained Novacela Deville, France-based surface protection solutions company, from Compagnie Chargers stock. Financial terms were not disclosed.

FUND + FUND FUND

– 2150a venture capital firm based in London, UK, has raised €210 million ($258 million) for a second fund focused on climate technology companies.