Harper Raises $47M to Build an Autonomous Commercial Insurance Brokerage

Harper raised $47 million in a combined seed and Series A funding round led by Emergence Capital to expand its AI-native commercial insurance brokerage. The round, which included participation from Y Combinator, Peak XV Partners, Antler, 10x Founders, Fellows Fund, Lobster Capital, and Outset Capital, represents the largest publicly disclosed Series A raised by a Black founder, according to AfroTech.

Founded in 2024 and participating in the YC Winter 2025 batch, the San Francisco-based startup acts directly as a licensed commercial insurance brokerage rather than selling software to legacy firms. Harper targets middle-market businesses across industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, hospitality, transportation fleets, construction, and local restaurants.

Automating Commercial Risk and Coverage

Traditional commercial insurance brokerages often take five to seven days to deliver quotes and finalize policy details, relying on manual document collection and unstructured communication across email and spreadsheets. Harper uses custom artificial intelligence models to process policy applications, route submissions to underwriters, handle follow-ups, collect compliance documentation, and manage client communications.

By running an autonomous technology stack built on operational workflows, the company reduces the time required to secure coverage down to 24 to 48 hours. Its system connects with more than 160 insurance carriers and underwriters to place policies including general liability, professional liability, commercial auto, commercial property, garage liability, cyber, umbrella, and workers' compensation.

According to coverage by TechCrunch, a standard sales team at a human-led brokerage typically manages 20 to 30 deals per month. Harper relies on AI to handle operational workloads, enabling the business to process over 1,000 customers per month while serving more than 5,000 companies across the United States.

Founder Backgrounds

Harper was founded by Chief Executive Officer Dakotah Rice and Chief Technology Officer Tushar Nair.

Dakotah Rice graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in Political Science before working as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs. He spent three years as an investment analyst at Coatue Management and served as a senior analyst at The Carlyle Group. In 2021, he entered Harvard Business School before leaving to build Poolit, an investment platform that operated until 2023.

Tushar Nair holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He previously worked as a staff software engineer at Harry's, served as Vice President at Goldman Sachs, and worked as Director of Engineering at Poolit alongside Rice.

Rice noted to TechCrunch that he grew up observing the operational friction facing small businesses run by his family in rural Alabama, including his father's nightclub and his uncle's trucking company. After initially exploring software tools for third-party insurance agencies, Rice and Nair decided to build a full-stack, AI-native brokerage.

Expansion and Engineering Hiring

Following its $47 million financing, Harper plans to scale its core technology, expand carrier partnerships, and grow its 25-person team across engineering, operations, account management, and go-to-market.

To build out its autonomous platform and underlying voice and document models, the company is hiring a Senior Member of Technical Staff, Voice ($170,000 – $275,000 USD) and a Senior Member of Technical Staff ($160,000 – $230,000 USD). Engineering teams work onsite at the company's San Francisco headquarters.

For operational and commercial scale, Harper is recruiting across technical deployment and leadership roles, including a Forward Deployed Engineer ($140,000 – $200,000 USD) to work directly on implementation and workflows, as well as a Senior Operations Lead ($180,000 – $220,000 USD) and Head of Customer Experience ($185,000 – $250,000 USD).

Open Positions at Harper

All open roles are full-time and onsite in San Francisco.

See all open roles at Harper