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

“The Internet is really what gave rise to outsourcing,” said Cuffe. “In the 1990s, 2000s, for the first time, you could basically do this work wherever you were and send it back. Now we’re seeing the same thing, where all of this work that was being 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, Fortune has exclusively learned. In insurance, the BPO market is around $70 billion in annual spend, and if you include the broader financial services operations around the industry, that number ticks up to $400 billion, said Cuffe. 

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

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

“Legal took off first because copilots were useful, and there were a lot of people doing that work,” Cuffe told Fortune. “In insurance, the tasks are at much, much higher scale—hundreds of thousands or millions of submissions, tens of thousands of claims, for some of these insurers. They need to be able to process that… The agent moment is what’s unlocking the insurance industry for us.”

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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VENTURE CAPITAL

- Ricursive Technologies, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based AI lab, raised $300 million in Series A funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round and was joined by Felicis Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and others.

- Upwind, a San Francisco-based cloud security company, raised $250 million in Series B funding. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round and was joined by Salesforce Ventures, Picture Capital, and existing investors.

- Synthesia, a London, U.K.-based platform designed for generating videos with AI from text prompts, raised $200 million in Series E funding. Google Ventures led the round and was joined by Evantic, Hedosophia, NVentures, Accel, Kleiner Perkins, and others.

- Memcyco, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based digital risk protection platform, raised $37 million in Series A funding. NAventures, E. León Jimenes, and Pags Group led the round and was joined by others.

- Visitt, a New York City-based AI-powered property operations platform, raised $22 million in Series B funding. Susquehanna Growth Equity led the round and was joined by Vertex Ventures Israel, Anfield, and Sarona Ventures.

- Barnwell Bio, a New York City-based animal health and behavior intelligence company, raised $6 million in seed funding. Twelve Below led the round and was joined by Max Ventures, Dorm Room Fund, Banter Capital, and others.

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

- Consio AI, a Toronto, Canada-based provider of AI voice agents and phone services designed for e-commerce businesses, raised $3.3 million in funding. RTP Global led the round and was joined by SaaStr Fund, Mu Ventures, and others.

- Lucend, a New York City-based AI platform designed for data center optimization, raised $3.3 million in seed funding. Remarkable Ventures Climate led the round and was joined by Mitsubishi Electric’s Innovation Fund, New Climate Ventures, Avesta, and Stepchange.

- Billdr, a Montreal, Canada-based AI-powered operating system for construction, raised $3.2 million in seed funding. White Star Capital led the round and was joined by One Way Ventures, Desjardins Capital, asterX, and Formentera Capital.

- Mantas, a Dubai, U.A.E.-based insurance and prevention platform designed for cloud outage risk, raised $1.8 million in pre-seed funding from Nuwa Capital, Suhail Ventures, Plus VC, and others.

PRIVATE EQUITY

- CVC agreed to acquire Marathon, a New York City-based credit manager, for up to $1.2 billion.

EXITS

- Leidos agreed to acquire ENTRUST Solutions Group, a Lisle, Ill.-based utility engineering and consulting company, from Kohlberg, for approximately $2.4 billion. 

- KPS Capital Partners acquired Novacel, a Deville, France-based surface protection solutions company, from Compagnie Chargeurs Invest. Financial terms were not disclosed.

FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS

- 2150, a London, U.K.-based venture capital firm, raised €210 million ($258 million) for its second fund focused on climate tech companies.