According to pymnts.com, Freehand has raised $75 million to scale its autonomous artificial intelligence agents designed to manage supply chain spend for global enterprises.
AI Agents Drive End-to-End Procurement Automation
The funding round was co-led by Battery Ventures and NewRoad Capital Partners. According to the release issued on July 29, 2026, Freehand’s AI platform automates procurement, supplier management, invoicing, and payments — executing tasks including rate negotiation, contract enforcement, supplier oversight, payment processing, and data reconciliation across enterprise systems.
Freehand’s agents operate with contextual awareness of enterprise operations, enabling them to make decisions and take actions without human intervention. As Nitin Jayakrishnan, co-founder and CEO of Freehand, stated in the release:
“Our AI agents decide, act and take accountability for outcomes.” — Nitin Jayakrishnan, co-founder and CEO of Freehand
Enterprise Deployments Deliver Measurable Outcomes
The platform is already deployed at major global corporations, including Meta, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Dunkin’, Pfizer, and Cardinal Health. In these implementations, the system delivers quantifiable improvements: recovering 5% to 10% of spend in complex categories, accelerating workflows five to seven times, shortening procure-to-pay cycles by more than 70%, and enabling companies to redeploy internal teams while winding down outsourcing arrangements.
Abhijeet Manohar, Freehand’s other co-founder, emphasized the paradigm shift embedded in the technology:
“Shifting from building software for the user to building software that is the user meant we could drive far deeper transformation for our customers.” — Abhijeet Manohar, co-founder of Freehand
Funding Backers Cite Enterprise-Scale Impact
Dharmesh Thakker, General Partner at Battery Ventures, noted that Freehand’s agents — equipped with enterprise context and decision-making authority — unlock “millions in savings for enterprises”. Meanwhile, Gregoire Lehmann, partner at NewRoad Capital Partners, affirmed that Freehand’s customers are achieving measurable business outcomes and that NewRoad believes the company is “well positioned to become the category leader in AI-native supply chain spend management”.
The PYMNTS Intelligence report titled The Investment Impact of GenAI Operating Standards on Enterprise Adoption found that 73% of enterprises now use or are considering generative AI to enhance procurement efficiency. That adoption is most advanced among larger enterprises generating $10 billion or more in annual revenue.
Procurement Leads Broader AI Adoption Trend
PYMNTS reported on July 27, 2026 that procurement is the leading functional area for enterprise AI adoption — with AI agents already negotiating supplier contracts, processing purchase orders, and closing deals autonomously on behalf of major corporations. This aligns with broader industry momentum: earlier in 2026, WEX deployed AI to prevent fleet fuel fraud, and Pagaya reported increased loan volume despite lower per-dollar earnings — illustrating how AI-native platforms are delivering scalable financial and operational impact across B2B domains.
Source: pymnts.com
Compiled from international media by the SCI.AI editorial team.
