Liberate secures $50M at $300M valuation to bring AI deeper into insurance back offices

Liberate, an AI startup that automates insurance processes, has raised $50 million in a round led by Battery Ventures as it looks to scale agent deployments across carriers and agencies globally.

The full equity round values ​​the three-year-old startup at $300 million, with participation from new investor Canapi Ventures and returning backers Redpoint Ventures, Eclipse and Commerce Ventures.

The insurance industry was going through a difficult phase, with rising operating costs, the limitations of the legacy system, and increasing customer expectations. Specifically, in the non-life sector, global premium growth is expected to slow through 2026, driven by increased competition, weak pricing momentum, and new cost pressures, including tariffs, according to a recent report from Deloitte. While some telecom companies have experimented with AI, many early efforts faltered due to fragmented data and inflexible workflows. But that’s changing now, as insurers shift toward adopting AI more widely — integrating it into the core of their operations rather than placing it at the top. Liberate steps in to confront this transformation head-on.

Founded in 2022, the San Francisco startup builds AI systems for property and casualty insurance companies, with a focus on sales, service and claims. On the front end, a voice AI assistant, Nicole, handles incoming and outgoing calls to help sell policies or respond to service requests. Behind the scenes, a network of logic-based AI agents connects to insurers’ existing systems, gathering context and generating responses that Nicole delivers — all without human intervention.

Liberate’s AI agents are designed to complete end-to-end tasks – not just answer inquiries or escalate tickets. These policies include quoting, processing claims, and updating approvals, among other routine functions.

Agents can also work via SMS and email, allowing insurers to interact with customers across different channels while automating more of their daily workflow.

“Insurance companies want to grow, but they are unable to do so,” Amrish Singh, co-founder and CEO of Liberate (pictured above, center) said in an interview. “It’s the status quo where the opportunity exists.”

Singh co-founded Liberate after nearly four years at Metromile, the Lemonade-owned auto insurance company, where he worked in both back-office operations and technology. He teamed up with Ryan Eldridge, Liberate’s VP of Engineering and also a former Metromile CEO, and Jason St. Pierre, the company’s CPO, who previously held positions at Twitter, Google and Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences arm.

Liberate’s AI systems have helped increase sales by 15% and reduce costs by 23%, Singh told TechCrunch, adding that the startup now has more than 60 clients and is focusing on the top 100 carriers and agencies, which together represent 70% to 80% of the U.S. property and casualty insurance market.

The technology uses reinforcement learning designed for long, structured insurance conversations. Every interaction is auditable and includes human safeguards to meet compliance requirements, the startup said.

Over the past year, Liberate has expanded from 10,000 monthly automations to 1.3 million automated solutions, Singh said. These include direct interactions with customers via voice AI, as well as back-office tasks handled by AI agents integrated into carriers’ platforms.

Because AI systems are still capable of making mistakes and are not foolproof yetLiberate uses an internal tool called Supervisor to monitor all interactions between its agents and customers. The software flags problems or anomalies and escalates to a human when the AI ​​response is off track, Singh said.

“The advantage of serving just one industry, and within that service only three specific use cases, is that you can put more guardrails in place,” the executive noted.

Without revealing the names of its clients, Liberate said that by using its agents, the response time to a hurricane claim dropped from 30 hours to 30 seconds.

AI agents enable 24/7 sales processes, allowing customers to purchase insurance even in the middle of the night or early morning — times when human agents are typically not available, Singh said.

Prior to this round, Liberate raised a $15 million Series A last year. Its AI-powered omnichannel voice experience and ability to fully automate tasks through integration into existing systems were key factors that attracted investors to back the company more broadly.

“Mapping the process, modeling it, making sure all the systems communications are in place, well-tested, and appropriately designed so that you can complete the task, not just communicate, is what Liberate does,” Marcus Ryu, general partner at Battery Ventures, told TechCrunch.

Ryu, who previously worked with property and casualty insurance companies at Guidewire Software, focuses on enterprise software, fintech, and insurtech investments at Battery Ventures. He joins Liberate’s board of directors.

The Series B funding will be used to expand Liberate’s logic capabilities and support broader rollout across insurers. The startup has raised $72 million to date and currently employs about 50 people.