Freehand Series B raises $75M for supply chain finance AI
Battery Ventures and NewRoad co-led the round, bringing Freehand’s total funding to $100 million as supply chain AI funding picks up.
By Marcus Adeyemi · Startups Editor
· 3 min read
Freehand raised a $75 million Series B to expand AI agents for enterprise supply chain spend and back-office finance work. The Freehand Series B was co-led by Battery Ventures and NewRoad Capital Partners, with participation from Nexus Venture Partners and former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.
The San Francisco startup said the round brings total funding to $100 million. Freehand did not disclose its valuation. CEO and co-founder Nitin Jayakrishnan told Crunchbase News the new price was a “significant step up” from the company’s $25 million Series A, which was raised in March 2024. Revenue and headcount were not disclosed.
The financing lands during a stronger period for logistics and supply chain startup funding. Crunchbase data cited by the company shows startups in the category raised $6.2 billion across 350 deals in the first half of 2026, putting the year on track to be the strongest since 2022. The macro pitch is familiar: tariffs, tax changes, immigration policy and trade route disruptions have put pressure on back-office supply chain models built around offshore labor.
What does Freehand do?
Freehand builds AI agents that operate inside enterprise systems to check bills, read contracts and policies, monitor operational milestones and handle vendor payment disputes, according to the company. Its target is non-standard spend in logistics, raw materials, parts and labor, rather than the corporate card, travel and bill-pay workflows associated with spend platforms such as Ramp.
The company says its software can evaluate whether supplier invoices match contracted services and operational records, then negotiate adjustments with vendors when it identifies a discrepancy. That is a high-friction area for large companies because global shipping, sourcing and supplier contracts create payment trails that are difficult to validate manually.
Freehand’s claims are broad, and the company did not provide audited customer-level metrics. Jayakrishnan said the platform helps customers recover 5% to 10% of spend in certain categories, complete complex workflows 5x to 7x faster and reduce procure-to-pay cycle times by more than 70%.
Who is using Freehand?
Freehand said it has about 50 customers, including Meta, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Cardinal Health. The company says its agents process billions of dollars in payments across 60 to 70 countries and hundreds of currencies without human supervision.
Freehand was founded in February 2024 by Jayakrishnan and Abhijeet Manohar. The pair previously co-founded Pando, a transportation management and procure-to-pay software company for large enterprise logistics teams. They moved out of operating roles at Pando in early 2024 and into board seats before starting Freehand. Pando later sold to a strategic buyer in early 2026, according to Crunchbase News, giving the founders a full shareholder exit.
Battery Ventures general partner Dharmesh Thakker told Crunchbase News that supply chain and logistics still depend heavily on manual work and repetitive workflows. He said Battery’s research found Freehand differentiated by its founders’ category experience, its focus on large Fortune 500 shippers and its reported business outcomes.
This story draws on original reporting from Crunchbase News.
