Freehand has raised $75m (£58m) to accelerate the rollout of artificial intelligence agents designed to take over invoice handling, supplier negotiations, payments and other supply-chain finance tasks for major corporations.
The funding round was co-led by Battery Ventures and NewRoad Capital Partners, with Nexus Venture Partners and PSP Growth also taking part. PSP Growth is led by former US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.
Freehand did not reveal the valuation attached to the investment, nor whether the capital was raised through equity, debt or another type of security. As part of the deal, Battery Ventures general partner Dharmesh Thakker will join the company’s board.
The injection of capital comes only months after Freehand emerged from stealth in February. The company says its software is already in use at Meta, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Dunkin’ and Cardinal Health, but it has not disclosed the size, scope or length of those commercial arrangements.
Unilever confirmed it is using Freehand’s technology in its supply-chain operations. The deployment has been characterised internally as a move “from software that assists to software that runs our supply chain,” according to Algar.
Automating procure-to-pay
Freehand’s platform focuses on the procure-to-pay cycle, beginning with the processing of invoices. Its AI agents are built to review contracts, negotiate supplier pricing, flag potential overbilling, execute payments and reconcile transactions within a customer’s existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
These activities have traditionally involved a patchwork of legacy software tools and large outsourced back-office teams. Freehand is backing a shift towards autonomous systems that do the work themselves rather than merely providing recommendations for human staff to approve.
At the core of the system is what the company calls a Category Context Graph. This data structure connects unstructured information from emails and documents with structured transaction records inside corporate systems, creating a detailed history of decisions, exceptions and spending patterns for each procurement category.
Freehand says early adopters have been able to complete relevant workflows between five and seven times faster, while cutting procure-to-pay cycle times by more than 70%. The company also claims that some customers have recovered between 5% and 10% of spending in complex categories; however, these performance figures have not been independently audited.
Targeting trillions in corporate expenditure
The company is aiming at a vast slice of US corporate spending. According to Bureau of Economic Analysis figures cited by Freehand, companies in the United States collectively spend more than $20tn each year on materials, logistics, data centres and services.
Freehand estimates that enterprises also outlay around $16bn annually on supply-chain software and a further $348bn on personnel who carry out tasks existing systems are unable to automate. Those numbers are the company’s own calculations and have not been verified by independent market researchers.
The firm argues that macroeconomic and policy shifts are making its proposition more attractive. Tariffs, taxes and tighter immigration rules are increasing the costs associated with the outsourcing models widely used by US businesses, a trend Freehand believes will push more companies to automate finance and supply-chain operations instead of relying on large offshore teams.
Part of a wider automation and crypto funding wave
Freehand’s raise comes against a backdrop of continued investor appetite for technology that streamlines financial and operational processes.
Financial infrastructure firm Augustus recently secured $180m in a Series B round at a $1bn valuation, with the aim of connecting traditional payment networks to stablecoins and enabling continuous settlement.
As previously reported by crypto.news, World Foundation raised $52.5m through a strategic sale of WLD tokens to expand its World ID network. All tokens involved in that transaction will remain locked for one year.
Robinhood Chain launch platform Memecoin.Fun has also attracted $3.5m via USDG. The project plans to build launchpad infrastructure, cross-chain bridge capabilities and support tools for memecoins across multiple blockchains.
Expansion beyond invoices
Freehand intends to use its new funding to extend its AI agents beyond their current focus on invoice review and payments. The longer-term strategy is to deploy the technology across a broader range of supply-chain activities and spending categories.
That ambition would place Freehand in more direct competition with established procurement platforms, business-process outsourcing specialists and large enterprise software vendors, as companies reassess how they manage the financial plumbing behind global supply chains.
