Freehand Series B raises $75 million for supply-chain AI

Freehand Series B funding brought in $75 million for the San Francisco enterprise AI startup, giving it more capital to sell software that automates supply-chain spending work for large companies. For retail investors tracking private AI companies, the round shows how AI funding is moving beyond chatbots and into the back-office systems that handle invoices, vendors and payments.

Battery Ventures and NewRoad Capital Partners co-led the financing, according to Crunchbase News. Nexus Venture Partners and former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker also participated. Freehand has now raised $100 million in total, Crunchbase News reported.

Freehand did not disclose its valuation. CEO and co-founder Nitin Jayakrishnan told Crunchbase News the new valuation marked a meaningful increase from the company’s $25 million Series A, which closed in March 2024.

What does Freehand do?

Freehand builds autonomous AI agents, meaning software tools designed to complete business tasks with limited or no human handling. Its focus is supply-chain finance: checking bills, reading contracts, tracking whether work was completed and negotiating billing issues with suppliers.

The company is aimed at enterprise customers with complex spending needs, rather than typical corporate-card use cases. While spend-management companies such as Ramp are known for cards, travel expenses and bill payments, Freehand targets harder-to-standardize costs tied to logistics, raw materials, parts and labor.

Freehand’s software works inside a customer’s existing systems, according to the company. It can review contracts, policies, emails and internal records to determine whether supplier charges match agreed terms and operational milestones.

Why supply-chain bills are hard to automate

Large global companies often deal with long contracts, multiple suppliers, changing trade routes and complicated service obligations. Jayakrishnan told Crunchbase News that when a supplier sends a large invoice, companies may need to verify whether the number reflects the actual work performed and the contract terms.

That checking process has typically required large back-office teams, according to Jayakrishnan. Freehand says its agents can identify discrepancies and negotiate adjustments while preserving supplier relationships, a task that has often depended on employee judgment and company-specific knowledge.

Freehand says its platform is used by about 50 customers, including Meta, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Cardinal Health. The company told Crunchbase News it autonomously processes billions of dollars in payments across 60 to 70 countries and hundreds of currencies without human supervision.

Jayakrishnan told Crunchbase News the technology has helped customers recover 5% to 10% of spend across certain categories, complete complex operational workflows 5 to 7 times faster and cut procure-to-pay cycle times by more than 70%. Procure-to-pay is the business process that starts when a company buys goods or services and ends when it pays the supplier.

Who founded Freehand?

Freehand was founded in February 2024 by Jayakrishnan and Abhijeet Manohar. Both previously co-founded Pando, a software-as-a-service transportation management system and procure-to-pay system of record for large enterprise logistics customers.

In early 2024, Jayakrishnan and Manohar moved out of operating roles at Pando and into board seats so they could start Freehand as a separate company focused on agentic AI. Pando later continued under a new executive team and was sold to a strategic buyer in early 2026, according to Crunchbase News, giving the founders a full shareholder exit.

Why investors are watching supply-chain AI

The funding comes as companies face pressure from tariffs, taxes, immigration policy and disrupted trade routes, all of which can make outsourced supply-chain operations more expensive or harder to manage. Crunchbase data shows supply-chain and logistics startups raised $6.2 billion across 350 deals in the first half of 2026, putting the category on pace for its strongest year since 2022.

Dharmesh Thakker, a general partner at Battery Ventures, told Crunchbase News by email that logistics and supply-chain management still depend heavily on manual work and repetitive processes. He said technology spending in the sector is just over $20 billion, leaving room for AI tools in tasks such as freight audits and payments.

Thakker said Battery studied supply-chain AI across its global offices and found Freehand notable for its founders’ experience, its focus on large Fortune 500 shippers and its measurable customer results.

This story draws on original reporting from Crunchbase News.