The insurance industry’s long-running romance with AI pilots may finally be turning into something more serious. StitchStudio, a Chicago-based AI platform purpose-built for insurance operations, just announced an $8 million financing round led by Voyager Capital, with participation from Lookout Ventures and Grit Capital Partners, plus continued backing from ManchesterStory and BrokerTech Fund, and additional investment from insurance industry veterans.
This funding signals a shift that many in the sector have been waiting for: moving AI from experimental sandboxes into real, daily production. StitchStudio’s AI agents already run inside the operations of major carriers and brokers, handling tasks that have long been bogged down by outdated systems.
Insurance operations are notoriously fragmented, running on systems of different vintages, with product and state rules that change constantly and procedures that vary from one organization to the next. That complexity makes rigid automation and generic AI tools difficult to deploy. The result? Teams end up re-keying the same data across disconnected systems, wasting time and risking errors.
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Today, firms including M3 Insurance, Heffernan Insurance Brokers, Fidelity Life, InstaBrain, and Frank Winston Crum Insurance use StitchStudio for quote comparison, producer onboarding, eligibility checks, billing reconciliation, and benefits quoting. The results are tangible: producer contracting times have been slashed from more than 23 days to same-day completion, proposal turnaround dropped from 90 minutes to 15, saving more than 5,000 hours, and over 75% of RFP processing is now automated.
“Every carrier we talk to has a drawer full of AI pilots. Getting a workflow into production takes unglamorous work. It must fit the systems and rules the company already runs, and someone in compliance must be able to sign off on it,” said Karan Mishra, CEO of StitchStudio. “Our customers got their first workflows live and came back to expand across the enterprise. This round helps us get them there faster.”
The company plans to use the fresh capital to expand its product suite across employee benefits, life and annuity, and commercial property and casualty lines; grow its customer success team; and scale self-service tools for customers and partners.
“We look for markets at an inflection point and founders who are uniquely suited to them. StitchStudio has both,” said Austin Guyette, partner at Voyager Capital. “Insurance is at the moment where AI is finally moving into core operations. By targeting the high-volume, manual workflows that slow carriers and brokers down, StitchStudio delivers measurable ROI in weeks, not years. Its founders have spent their careers inside these operations, and every customer we spoke with was already lining up their next workflow.”
How it works
StitchStudio builds AI agents on an insurance-specific model of products, rules, and documents, then configures them to each organization’s procedures and data. The agents operate inside existing systems through APIs and file exchanges, meaning customers keep their core systems intact. Every agent action is designed to be explainable and auditable — a critical feature for compliance departments.
“Carriers and brokers in our network are now asking who can get AI into production inside the systems they already run, with compliance comfortable signing off. StitchStudio is doing exactly that, and the customer expansion is why we invested again,” said Matt Kinley, Founding Partner at ManchesterStory.
Why it matters
This round is a sign that the insurance AI market is maturing, moving beyond proof-of-concept projects to real-world deployments that deliver measurable efficiency gains. As pressure mounts on carriers and brokers to modernize without ripping out legacy systems, StitchStudio’s approach — building auditable AI agents that plug into existing workflows — could become a blueprint for how the industry finally scales automation. The question now is whether other players can follow suit before the early movers cement their advantage.
About StitchStudio
StitchStudio is the AI platform built to operationalize insurance work. It helps carriers and brokers turn manual, high-friction workflows into explainable, auditable AI agents that run inside their existing systems, with no core system replacement required. StitchStudio is SOC 2 Type II certified and HIPAA compliant and is backed by Voyager Capital, Lookout Ventures, Grit Capital Partners, ManchesterStory and BrokerTech Fund.
Learn more at stitchstudio.ai and visit https://go.stitchstudio.ai/stitchstudio-raises-8-million
Lizzie Grosso
StitchStudio
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