Rosella, an AI-native commercial insurance brokerage focused on the U.S. small and mid-market segment, said it has raised A$3.7 million ($2.3 million) in pre-seed funding led by Peak XV Partners and Intact Private Capital.
The transaction comes as investors continue to back startups trying to modernise labor-intensive financial services with artificial intelligence, the company said.
The Sydney- and Austin-based company said the new capital will support its effort to streamline commercial insurance workflows, a sector it said remains heavily dependent on manual processes despite its size and complexity.
Rosella estimates the U.S. commercial insurance brokerage market at $215 billion, with tasks such as submissions, policy comparison and servicing still spread across fragmented carrier systems and legacy processes.
The company said it has built its brokerage platform from the ground up around AI tools designed to automate some of the industry’s most repetitive tasks while allowing brokers to focus on client relationships, sales, and risk judgement.
Among its stated capabilities are AI tools that compare policies, flag gaps in coverage and surface exclusions, as well as a submission agent that can handle client information across more than 100 carrier portals.
The company said the system has reduced certificate of insurance generation time to under two minutes from about 30 minutes.
The startup is targeting small and mid-market businesses in industries such as construction, manufacturing and logistics, where insurance needs are often more complex but service can be inconsistent because brokers tend to prioritise larger accounts.
Rosella said growing risk complexity, including the rise of nuclear verdicts and expansion in the excess and surplus market, is creating a wider opening for technology-driven service models.
Co-founder Sean Stuart said the company sees a broader shift underway in which services businesses are rebuilt using software rather than merely layering software onto legacy operations.
Rosella was founded by Stuart, a former venture capitalist focused on AI and SaaS, and Chris Dwyer, a former founding engineer at Constantinople and former AI product lead at Accenture.
The deal also gives Peak XV another bet on applied AI in financial infrastructure, while Intact Private Capital’s participation adds strategic weight from an investor backed by one of the insurance industry’s larger property-and-casualty groups.
Financial terms beyond the headline raise were not disclosed.
Rosella is pitching a familiar AI thesis in a less crowded corner of fintech: not consumer insurance, but the operational backbone of commercial brokerage.
That matters because insurance distribution is still full of manual rekeying, document review and fragmented carrier workflows.