Enterprise AI Goes Vertical and Investors Follow Fast

Breadth was the safest bet in enterprise artificial intelligence (AI): Build a platform and let the market find you. That model still raises money. But the largest checks this week went to companies that went the other way, picking one industry and rebuilding its workflows from the ground up.

Specialized Systems Replace Horizontal Tools

Loop, a full-stack AI platform for logistics and supply chains, raised its $95 million Series C led by Valor Equity Partners. The company ingests fragmented data from warehouses, enterprise resource planning (ERPs) and transport management systems, structures it and runs automated decisions around cost and working capital. Loop began in freight audit and payment and has used that foundation to build a broader intelligence layer for supply chain finance.

Wealth.com took the same approach in financial advisory. The company raised $65 million in an oversubscribed Series B to extend its estate and tax planning platform, which now supports advisory firms managing more than $15 trillion in client assets. At the center of the platform is Ester Intelligence, a proprietary AI engine trained on estate and tax scenarios. In 2025, Ester processed more than 100,000 estate documents and performed more than 1,000 deterministic calculations per estate distribution. Wealth.com reported 664% year-over-year growth in AI-powered workflows and secured approvals from the three largest broker-dealers in the U.S.

American Express moved from partnership to acquisition. The company acquired Hyper, founded in 2022, which built native AI agents that auto-categorize expenses, check them against policy and route reminders. Amex and Hyper had co-launched the Hypercard Rewards American Express card in 2024. The acquisition, expected to close in the second quarter of 2026, gives Amex in-house agentic AI talent ahead of a new expense management platform set to launch later this year.

This wave of vertical AI targets areas where inefficiency is expensive. It focuses on workflows that tie directly to revenue, cost or risk. That focus makes the value easier to measure and the adoption easier to justify.

AI-Native Platforms Rebuild Workflows From Scratch

Alongside established players acquiring AI capabilities, a separate class of companies is drawing capital by building the entire operating stack as AI-first, with no legacy architecture to carry.

AI-native systems rely on continuous feedback loops. Data flows from operations back into the model. Performance improves over time. This creates an advantage that compounds. Companies that start with AI can iterate faster and capture more value from each workflow they control.

Slash Financial reached unicorn status after closing a $100 million Series C led by Ribbit Capital, co-led by Khosla Ventures and Goodwater Capital. The San Francisco-based business banking platform grew from $10 million to $250 million in annualized revenue in 24 months and now processes more than $30 billion in annualized payment volume across 5,000 businesses. Ribbit Capital founder Micky Malka attributed the growth to an AI-native model where agents handle processes that previously required entire departments. The round brings total raised to $160 million.

Factory, an autonomous software engineering platform used by enterprises including Nvidia, Adobe and Adyen, raised $150 million in a Series C led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Blackstone and Insight Partners, the company announced. Its platform handles multi-step engineering tasks across entire development cycles. The company said it doubled revenue each month for the past six months. The round values Factory at $1.5 billion.

Nas.com, an all-in-one business platform for solo entrepreneurs built by Nas Daily creator Nuseir Yassin, raised $27 million in a Series A also led by Khosla Ventures. The platform handles product creation, storefront setup, marketing, customer acquisition and payments for 3.5 million members across 150 countries.