Freehand raises $75 million to automate corporate supply chain procurement
The startup has secured $75 million to expand its artificial intelligence procurement tools, highlighting a broader shift as major global enterprises replace outsourced supply chain labor with autonomous software to navigate rising tariffs and labor constraints.
Freehand, an artificial intelligence startup, has raised $75 million to expand its automated procurement tools for large corporations. The funding round was co-led by Battery Ventures and NewRoad Capital Partners, with additional backing from Nexus Venture Partners and PSP Growth.
The company develops software agents designed to manage corporate supply chain spending by reading contracts, negotiating supplier rates, and processing payments. The software focuses on invoice management, replacing the legacy systems and large teams of outsourced staff that have traditionally handled corporate procurement.
Freehand claims its agents are already deployed at major global corporations, including Unilever, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Meta, Dunkin’, and Cardinal Health. The inclusion of Unilever highlights the appeal of this technology to major European consumer goods groups looking to modernize their operations.
Matt Algar, the consumer-goods group’s global vice-president of supply chain, noted that the technology represents a shift “from software that assists to software that runs our supply chain.” He characterized the integration as an initial, comprehensive rollout of autonomous agents within the company.
According to the company, early users have shortened procure-to-pay cycles by more than 70 percent and completed workflows five to seven times faster. Freehand also reports that its agents have recovered 5 to 10 percent of spend in complex categories, though these figures remain independently unaudited.
This push toward autonomous software arrives as tariffs, taxes, and tighter immigration policies strain the outsourcing models that have dominated corporate supply chains for decades. Enterprises are increasingly looking for technological solutions to maintain efficiency amid these macroeconomic pressures.
The addressable market is vast, with American companies spending over $20 trillion annually on the materials and services that underpin the economy. Freehand estimates that enterprises currently spend $16 billion a year on supply-chain software and another $348 billion on the human labor required to manage it.
Nitin Jayakrishnan, the chief executive and co-founder who previously established the logistics firm Pando, emphasized the operational goal of the platform. “We built Freehand to close that gap, with AI Agents that decide, act and take accountability for outcomes,” he said.
The underlying technology relies on a proprietary data structure called a Category Context Graph, which links unstructured signals like emails to structured enterprise data. Co-founder Abhijeet Manohar argued that this accumulated context is the true competitive advantage, stating that “the difference between an agent that acts and a chatbot that suggests is context.”
Having started with invoice management, the company plans to expand across all supply-chain processes to become core infrastructure for global trade. Battery Ventures general partner Dharmesh Thakker will join the board, adding to the firm's existing investments in enterprise procurement software.
