Freehand, an artificial intelligence startup founded by Indian entrepreneurs Nitin Jayakrishnan and Abhijeet Manohar, has raised $75 million in a funding round co-led by Battery Ventures and NewRoad Capital Partners.
The round also saw participation from PSP Growth, the investment firm chaired by former US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, existing investor Nexus Venture Partners and other investors. Battery Ventures General Partner Dharmesh Thakker will join Freehand’s board following the investment.
Freehand will use the capital to expand the deployment of its autonomous AI agents across large enterprises. The San Francisco-headquartered company has operated in stealth for the past two years and has deployed its technology at companies including Meta, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Dunkin’ and Cardinal Health.
The startup develops AI agents that manage supply-chain spending and automate processes across procurement, supplier management, invoice verification and payments. Its agents can read contracts, identify incorrect or duplicate charges, communicate with suppliers, process payments and reconcile data within enterprise resource planning systems.
Freehand said its customers have recovered between 5% and 10% of spending in complex supply-chain categories, completed workflows five to seven times faster and reduced procurement-to-payment cycles by more than 70%.
“Freehand marks one of the first full-scale agentic deployments at Unilever,” said Matt Algar, Global Vice President of Supply Chain at Unilever.
Freehand’s platform is built on its proprietary Category Context Graph, which combines structured information from enterprise systems with unstructured data contained in contracts, documents and communication channels. The system maintains an audit trail explaining the basis for decisions taken by its AI agents.
Jayakrishnan previously founded enterprise logistics software company Pando, while Manohar was associated with the company as a co-founder. The two entrepreneurs subsequently established Freehand to develop AI systems capable of executing enterprise workflows rather than only providing recommendations.
Freehand is headquartered in San Francisco and builds autonomous AI agents for supply-chain spend management. Its technology supports complex categories including logistics, direct materials, maintenance, repair and operations.
