AI-Powered Commercial Insurance Startup Announces The Largest Publicly Disclosed Series A Amount Raised By A Black Founder – AfroTech
Co-founder Dakotah Rice raised historic funding toward the top of the year.
Rice is the CEO of Harper, an AI-powered commercial insurance brokerage startup. He learned about some of the challenges of insurance while growing up in rural Alabama, through his father’s nightclub and his uncle’s trucking company, according to a press release. Rice recalled seeing firsthand what it took to sustain a business, describing it as not so glamorous.
“It was watching my family navigate a system that never seemed to work for them,” he recalled in the press release. “Insurance always got in the way. The landlord needed a COI. The bank needed proof of coverage. Every time, it meant weeks of calls, paperwork nobody understood, and brokers who made you feel like you were bothering them. My uncle’s trucking fleet didn’t fail because he was a bad operator. The financing and insurance costs crushed him before he had a chance.”
“That memory never left me,” he added.
After graduating from Brown University, Rice worked as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs, an investment analyst at Coatue Management, and an investor at The Carlyle Group, according to his LinkedIn. He also attended Harvard Business School but left to focus on building.
“After Goldman, Carlyle, and four years at Coatue, I could have kept picking stocks. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the most important infrastructure in America—the stuff that protects the businesses that actually employ people—was still running on fax machines and good intentions,” Rice said in the press release.
In 2024, Harper was launched alongside Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Tushar Nair. The company states that businesses can secure coverage within 48 hours, rather than weeks. Harper assists with the following insurance: general liability, professional liability, garage liability, commercial auto, commercial property, cyber, and umbrella.
Additionally, the venture also leverages AI to read applications, manage quotes, route submissions, engage with underwriters, and more.
“Our proprietary models handle the judgment-heavy, unstructured work that slows traditional insurance down,” Rice mentioned in the press release.
The company claims to be trusted by more than 6,000 companies and to have a 98.8% client retention rate across sectors and risk levels, according to its website. Harper has served manufacturers, healthcare providers, hospitality groups, transportation fleets, construction firms, and bars and restaurants, among others.
“Harper isn’t selling software to legacy brokerages and hoping they figure it out. We are the brokerage. We own the customer relationship,” Rice said in the press release. “We do the work. And because AI can execute judgment at scale, we can deliver the quality of service that used to be reserved for Fortune 500 companies to every manufacturer, every healthcare facility, every fleet operator in middle America.”
Rice also shared on LinkedIn that Harper grew from $0 to $5 million in annual recurring revenue “in a matter of months.”
“From Goldman Sachs to one of the fastest growing AI Startups,” he said.
Harper is anchored by $47 million in combined Seed and Series A funding, announced in February and led by Emergence Capital. Y Combinator, Peak XV, Antler, 10X Founders, Fellows Fund, and Outset Capital also participated in the round.
The funding will support scaling Harper’s team to hire engineers, account managers, and operators, as well as expand carrier relationships and invest in AI infrastructure, according to the press release.
