Insurance Technology: Newfront Raises $200M; EvolutionIQ Brings In $21M

Insurance brokerage platform Newfront announced a $200 million investment at a $2.2 billion valuation led by the Goldman Sachs Asset Management and B Capital with participation from existing investors including Founders Fund and Meritech Capital.

Newfront said it plans to grow its technology teams and focus on harnessing data-driven insights for clients. The company also plans to expand across the U.S.

The platform serves commercial risks, risk management, employee benefits, private client and retirement services brokerage.

According to the company, in seven months it has launched a new client dashboard, refined benchmarking capabilities, welcomed more than 200 new colleagues, and experienced fast growth while achieving profitability.

“The nature of risk has changed drastically over the past century but the insurance industry has not modernized to meet these new challenges,” said Newfront co-founder and CEO Spike Lipkin, claiming Newfront is building a modern platform for clients, insurance professionals, and trading partners.

Paul Pate, vice president within Goldman Sachs Asset Management said his firm sees see “modern, full-stack platforms” transforming financial services, and Newfront’s “marriage of technology, people, and domain expertise represents the future of the insurance industry.”

Additional investors in the round include Y Combinator, Index Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, XYZ, Susa Ventures, Pruven, Propel, Vetamer, Altai, Tony Xu CEO of Doordash, and others.

Headquartered in San Francisco, Newfront has offices in California, Washington, Illinois and New York and has more than 800 employees.

EvolutionIQ Raises $21M Series A To Deliver AI Based Claims Guidance Across The Industry

Artificial intelligence-driven insurance claims guidance platform EvolutionIQ announced that it raised $21 million in Series A funding.

EvolutionIQ actively monitors open claims to guide frontline operators to the ones that require more attention, new actions, or complex decision-making. The company said its Insurance carrier and third party administrator customers report increased claim capacity and lower claim cost.

The round was led by Brewer Lane Ventures, with participation from major seed investors including FirstRound Capital, FirstMark Capital and Foundation Capital, and new participation from Altai Ventures and Asymmetric Ventures. Industry-leading strategic investors including Reliance Standard Life, New York Life Ventures, Guardian Life and Sedgwick, a leading global risk, benefits, and integrated solutions company have also joined the round.

“We’ve proven that deep learning, an advanced branch of machine learning, is the future of claim handling, and now we’ll be able to deliver even more to our carriers,” says Tomas Vykruta, CEO of EvolutionIQ and former artificial intelligence leader at Google. Today, the company said 25% of its technical employees come from Google.

The company said the funding will largely be used to expand the engineering, data science, product, and customer teams.