Ciridae, an AI transformation company targeting mid-market businesses in so-called “real economy” sectors, has raised $20 million in seed funding. The round was led by Accel, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Sunflower Capital, and Backcountry Ventures.
Funding and investor profile
Accel, the global venture capital firm founded in 1983 and known for early-stage investments in Facebook, Dropbox, and Slack, led the funding round. The firm recently raised a $650 million fund for early-stage companies in Europe and Israel, with a focus on AI and cybersecurity. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), which manages at least $90 billion in assets as of March 2026, also participated, alongside General Catalyst — a firm that has invested in over 1,000 companies including Airbnb, Stripe, and Snap, and raised $8 billion in its largest fundraise in October 2024. Sunflower Capital, a seed-stage firm founded by former Sequoia Capital partner Liu Jiang that closed a $150 million second fund in April 2025, and Backcountry Ventures, a Carpinteria-based venture firm whose co-founder and general partner Caitlin Dullanty focuses on AI infrastructure, quantum computing, and cybersecurity, completed the investor syndicate.
Founders and company origins
Ciridae was founded in 2025 in San Francisco by Jack Soslow and Jack Weissenberger. Soslow previously worked as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and as a data scientist at Meta. Weissenberger held engineering leadership roles at Salesforce before serving as head of machine learning at Teneyx. The founders identified what they describe as a gap in the market: businesses that stand to benefit most from AI have no way actually to adopt it. “We believe the biggest AI opportunity is not adding another layer of enterprise software, but building the operating infrastructure for the businesses the industry has largely passed by,” Soslow said.
How Ciridae rebuilds workflows with AI software
Instead of offering standalone automation products, Ciridae develops AI-native operating systems that embed directly with customers to transform core workflows into AI-native software. The company targets mid-market businesses in sectors such as logistics, healthcare, construction, industrial distribution, restoration, and home services — industries that the company says have been overlooked by the broader AI boom. Ciridae works directly with customers to rebuild and implement processes covering scheduling, procurement, invoicing, claims management, and financial operations. The company says implementations take as little as two weeks, compared with the typical 18 months for traditional enterprise software deployments.
The operational transformation market is competitive. Ciridae operates alongside established players such as Palantir Technologies, ServiceNow, and UiPath, as well as numerous workflow automation startups and consulting firms. ServiceNow, for example, offers an AI platform designed to automate business processes and manage digital infrastructure, while UiPath focuses on robotic process automation combined with AI. However, Ciridae distinguishes itself by targeting mid-market businesses with systems designed around specific operational processes, rather than broad enterprise software deployments.
According to Christine Esserman, partner at Accel, “The old playbook of financial engineering without operational transformation is breaking. AI is the new lever. Ciridae combines world-class AI talent with operators who can actually implement change, delivering production systems in days. That’s why they’re already becoming the partner of choice for some of the most sophisticated companies.”
Bryan Knodel, chief financial officer of Knight Commercial, said of the company’s work: “Ciridae challenged us to elevate our thinking. They built a transformative AI operating system that powers and connects every core part of our business.”
Early traction and future plans
Within months of launching commercially, Ciridae says it is already working with private equity firms representing more than $1.3 trillion in assets under management. The company has reached a high seven-figure revenue run rate while remaining cash-flow positive. Looking ahead, Ciridae plans to deepen its presence within private equity-backed businesses and expand development of its Ciridae AI Index, a benchmarking platform that evaluates operational transformation across firms and portfolio companies.
