The Journey to Series A

Ascerta, formerly Pay-i, has raised an $18.1M Series A, led by Dell Technologies Capital. Also joining in the round were Hitachi Ventures and our previous investors Wipro, BGV, Gaia Ventures, FUSE, Tola Capital and more. This brings our total amount raised to date to $23M. We chose Dell and Hitachi for their deep connections across the enterprise AI landscape, particularly with sovereign AI, which allow us to grow both our distribution and expertise in how to manage AI use globally.

Go back in time to when ChatGPT was new and the world was just starting to wrap its head around the implications of AI. Imagine walking into a VC’s office and telling them that you needed to raise millions of dollars because the entire software economy was going to switch away from subscription and towards consumption-based billing, and that businesses everywhere were going to be struggling under the weight of AI costs. ChatGPT was free at the time. This topic was on no one's radar, and we're grateful for the foresight of bold investors who allowed us to pursue our vision.

Today, AI spending is the fastest growing line item in enterprise history. Over the past 3 years we maintained our focus on solving the myriad issues that naturally emerge as businesses shift to an AI-first operating model.

We learned that truly providing differentiated insights couldn’t be done with superficial understanding or tracking of AI usage. We learned that the shape of the problem required us to invent and build virtually every component of Ascerta, taking almost nothing off the shelf. We built our own metering system from scratch, think of a real-time Stripe focused on AI use. We patented a system to interdict rogue agents before they blow budgets. We spent 18 months developing a new science alongside Stanford University to analyze, at scale, the efficacy of AI agents and relate them back to business objectives.

The pace of change that AI introduces is unprecedented. If a small, agile team of ultra-senior engineers can feel whipsawed around by the constant onslaught of new AI capabilities, then the world’s largest organizations stand to experience seismic disruption as their employees and the global economy changes around them. Through more than a thousand conversations with enterprises, partners, and customers, our mission grew to support these organizations in their AI transformations, inclusive not only of cost and value management, but also behavior management. How are your people using AI and are they using it correctly? What can leaders do to improve AI use, promote positive behaviors, and track changes over time? Which AI initiatives are working well, and which ones need to be scaled back?

The world is still in the early phases of grappling with the changes, and the specifics of what defines “success” and “value” are all evolving daily. We didn’t build an app with all the answers. We built a platform that adapts to the organization using it and constantly adjusts itself against a changing world. Organizations using Ascerta have accurate, real-time insights into how their AI strategy is working and how to maximize the value AI brings back to their business.

I couldn’t be more proud of the team and journey that got us here.