At Emergence, we've developed deep conviction around what we call AI-Native Services: companies that don't sell software, but own and deliver outcomes, leveraging AI at their core to do so faster, cheaper, and better than incumbents. We've written about this model, invested behind it, and seen early-stage companies in this category achieve remarkable results.
Today, we're thrilled to announce that Emergence has led Harper's Series A, bringing the company’s total funding to $47M. When we set out to find the company that would redefine the massive commercial insurance distribution market, Harper was exactly what we were looking for.
Insurance Was Never the Boring Part
When Dakotah Rice first told me about Harper, he didn't start with a TAM slide. He started with his uncle's trucking company in Alabama, a business that didn't fail because of bad operations, but because insurance and financing costs crushed it before it had a chance. He talked about growing up helping his dad run a nightclub, and seeing firsthand how the systems meant to protect small businesses consistently failed them.
That story captures the core problem. Commercial insurance is one of those industries where the gap between how things should work and how they actually work is staggering. The U.S. market is enormous and highly fragmented, dominated by regional players running on manual workflows and processes that haven't changed in decades. For a daycare, a healthcare facility, a fleet operator, or a restaurant group trying to get covered, the experience is painful - weeks of waiting, incomplete submissions, brokers stretched too thin to help. And the consequences aren't abstract. Without coverage, a daycare can't open. A logistics company can't onboard drivers. A construction firm can't break ground.
As Dakotah puts it: supply and demand were never the problem. Complex businesses needed real expertise, which was once impossible to scale. AI changes that.
Enter Harper
Founded in 2024, Harper is the AI-native commercial insurance brokerage of the future. Rather than selling AI tools to existing brokers (an approach the founders explored and quickly abandoned) Harper is the broker. They own the customer relationship, they do the work, and they've built every workflow from the ground up around AI.
Harper's proprietary models handle the judgment-heavy, unstructured work that slows traditional insurance down: reading applications, routing submissions, following up with underwriters, managing quotes. But the deeper unlock is matching. A seasoned broker might know a few dozen carrier relationships well enough to route a complex risk effectively. Harper's AI can synthesize across its entire network of wholesalers, MGAs, and carriers simultaneously, weighing appetite, pricing patterns, and underwriting preferences to find the best fit for each business in a way no individual human broker could. Businesses get coverage in hours, not weeks. In just over a year, Harper has served thousands of businesses across America, thriving on the complex risks that traditional brokerages struggle to serve efficiently.
Harper has also built deep relationships across a broad and growing network of wholesalers, MGAs, and carriers. Underwriters consistently describe Harper's submissions as higher quality and faster to process, making Harper a preferred partner and driving strong repeat business.
The Compounding Flywheel
Every lead, call, email, and policy generates data that feeds Harper's AI, improving matching between businesses and underwriters and driving higher conversion rates over time. This is the hallmark of a great AI-Native Services business: the work is the product, and the data generated by doing the work compounds into a durable advantage.
By owning the full service delivery rather than selling point solutions into a fragmented ecosystem, Harper controls the customer experience and captures the operational data needed to make its AI better with each interaction. It sidesteps the classic enterprise sales and adoption challenges of the insurance industry, and competes directly on results, delivering service quality that used to be reserved for the largest companies to every business in America.
A Founding Team Built for This
Great AI-Native Services companies require a rare combination: domain credibility and technical depth. Harper has both.
Dakotah Rice (CEO) brings a sharp financial mind honed at Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, and Coatue, combined with a family history in insurance that gives him a visceral understanding of the customer he's serving. His ability to build trust across the insurance ecosystem, and his intensity of drive, are exceptional. Tushar Nair (CTO), a former engineer at Goldman Sachs and repeat founder, brings deep technical expertise in AI-enabled operations. Together, they balance the credibility to earn trust in a relationship-driven industry with the technical ambition to relentlessly push toward automation.
The team's execution speaks for itself: from first customers to thousands of businesses served across dozens of states in just over a year.
Looking Ahead
Harper's ambition is to become the most efficient, data-driven brokerage in commercial insurance, delivering Fortune 500-level service to every business in America. We believe this is exactly the kind of market where an AI-Native Services company can build something generational.
We're excited to partner with Dakotah, Tushar, and the entire Harper team. Welcome to the Emergence family.
If your business needs commercial insurance, check out Harper. If you want to build something that matters, they're hiring.
