Insuretech Outmarket raises $34.5M just months after prior round

Outmarket, a startup that uses AI to automate the paperwork burdening insurance agencies and brokers, announced on September 28 a $34.5 million Series B led by SignalFire, with participation from Fika Ventures, Permanent Capital Ventures, TTV Capital and Dash Fund.

The round lands just four months after the company’s $17 million Series A. According to a person familiar with the investment, the new financing values Outmarket at $355 million. The cadence underscores how much investor appetite currently exists for vertical AI aimed at back-office work.

Founder Vishal Sankhala launched Outmarket in late 2023 after leading product at Ethos, the digital life insurance distributor that went public earlier this year, and after engineering roles at Facebook and Uber.

The company deliberately starts with commercial insurance, where policies are deeply nuanced and custom-tailored. Coverage types run from general liability and workers’ compensation to directors and officers (D&O) liability — more than 250 in all, each with its own application forms and documents to read.

“Ninety-five percent of insurance in the U.S. and worldwide is still sold through [human] agents, and when you look at sort of like how the process is today, it’s very manual,” Sankhala told TechCrunch. Outmarket’s AI takes on that administrative load, helping brokerages such as Marsh and Aon evaluate and recommend policies faster so people can focus on work that needs a human touch, like responding to customers during emergencies.

The product has found traction quickly. Since launching a new product 14 months ago, more than 300 insurance agencies have become customers, including 25% of the top 100. “For insurance, which is typically not a fast-moving industry, it’s quite fast growth,” Sankhala said.

Outmarket is not alone in building an AI operating layer for brokerages — Fulcrum AI and Further AI are pursuing similar ground. But the U.S. property and casualty market alone generates more than a trillion dollars in annual premiums, and Sankhala argues there is plenty of room to help agencies work faster and smarter.

What to watch next is whether Outmarket can push beyond top-tier brokerages into the much larger long tail of smaller agencies, and how quickly its automation reaches more complex steps such as underwriting and claims.