Freehand Raises $75 Mn To Expand Enterprise AI Platform
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Freehand, an AI startup building autonomous agents for enterprise supply chain operations, has raised $75 Mn (₹718 Cr) in a funding round co-led by Battery Ventures and NewRoad Capital Partners.
The round also saw participation from PSP Growth, a venture investment arm backed by former US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, along with existing investor Nexus Venture Partners and others.
The startup plans to use the fresh capital to expand its AI platform, which automates supply chain spending workflows for large enterprises.
Pando cofounders Nitin Jayakrishnan and Abhijeet Manohar founded Freehand in 2024 and the startup has been operating in stealth since. The San Francisco-based startup develops AI agents that handle procurement, supplier management, invoice processing, payments and contract compliance.
In essence, the platform replaces manual processes and legacy enterprise software by allowing AI agents to execute decisions across enterprise systems.
Freehand claims its AI agents are already deployed at companies including Meta, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Dunkin’ and Cardinal Health.
According to the startup, customers using its platform save 5-10% of spending in complex procurement categories, completed workflows 5-7X faster and reduced procure-to-pay cycles by more than 70%.
The funding comes at a time when enterprise AI startups are attracting a growing share of venture capital as businesses move beyond AI assistants to software that can automate entire workflows.
The latest funding comes amid growing investor interest in AI startups. Earlier this year, Sarvam AI raised $234 Mn in the first close of its Series B round at a $1.5 Bn valuation, with HCLTech investing $150 Mn to back its sovereign AI models and enterprise AI offerings.
AI startup Emergent also secured $70 Mn in a Series B round led by SoftBank Vision Fund and Khosla Ventures earlier last month, entering the unicorn club.
The latest funding also comes as enterprises increasingly experiment with agentic AI systems that can perform tasks with limited human intervention, instead of merely generating text or recommendations.
Several large tech majors, including Microsoft, Google and Salesforce, have launched AI agent platforms this year, while startups have focused on building specialised agents for functions such as finance, customer support, software development and supply chain management.
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