Vertical AI Startups Secure Over $140M

Vertical AI solutions are engineered for deep, domain-specific problems, contrasting with the broad, general-purpose nature of horizontal AI like ChatGPT. This specialized focus allows vertical players to tackle complex, regulated workflows in sectors like finance, healthcare, and insurance with higher accuracy than a generalist model. Firmable's $14M Series A was led by Airtree. The company is expanding from its base in the Asia-Pacific market to the United States, aiming to build out AI agents that execute sales tasks autonomously, built on a proprietary data foundation rather than recycled third-party feeds. Gambit Security, founded by veterans of the Israeli Defense Force's elite Unit 8200, emerged from stealth with a combined $61M in seed and Series A funding from backers including Spark Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Cyberstarts. The Tel Aviv-based startup uses AI to map an enterprise's entire technology stack to identify resilience gaps and validate recovery paths before an incident occurs. Alongside its funding, Gambit released research detailing a major breach of Mexican government institutions that was orchestrated by a single actor using AI models like Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's GPT-4 to operate as a coordinated team, writing exploits and automating data exfiltration. Harper Insure's $47M in combined Seed and Series A funding was led by Emergence Capital, with participation from Y Combinator and Peak XV. The company focuses on complex commercial risks, using AI to automate the labor-intensive brokerage process of reading applications and managing quotes, delivering coverage in 24-48 hours instead of weeks. The investment in Harper marks the largest publicly disclosed Series A round for a Black founder. With over 5,000 businesses served in its first 13 months, the company is using the capital to scale its engineering teams and deepen its relationships with over 165 underwriters.