Novella, an AI-native wholesale insurance brokerage specializing in large and complex physical assets, has raised $21 million to date, including a recently closed $16 million Series A round.
The round was led by Brewer Lane Ventures, with participation from Box Group, Crystal Venture Partners, SV Angel, Avid Ventures, Verissimo Ventures and Blank Ventures.
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Novella founders CTO Michael Tsibelman, CEO Max Kane and Head of Brokerage Alex Broome
(Photo: Rami Zarnegar)
The funding will support continued development of Novella’s proprietary AI underwriting technology for complex risks, expansion of its team of insurance brokers and the rollout of regional sales offices across the United States.
Founded in 2024, Novella was established by executives with backgrounds in insurance, artificial intelligence and enterprise technology. Co-founder and CEO Max Kane previously worked in product at Lemonade; co-founder and CTO Michael Tsibelman is a former senior engineer at Microsoft; and co-founder and head of brokerage Alex Broome previously built real estate insurance brokerage FounderShield, which was later acquired by The Baldwin Group.
Novella’s founders said they identified a gap in the Excess & Surplus insurance market, which covers large-scale and difficult-to-place risks that standard insurers typically avoid, including skyscrapers in hurricane-prone regions, major infrastructure projects, construction sites and other specialized assets.
While standard insurance products such as auto and home policies have become increasingly digital over the past decade, the complex-risk insurance market, which has grown to more than $150 billion in annual premiums, still relies heavily on manual workflows.
Because such assets require the review and analysis of hundreds of pages of documentation for each policy, brokers spend nearly half their time on operational and back-office tasks rather than client relationships and sales, the company said.
Novella says it has built the first AI-native wholesale insurance brokerage, powered by vertical AI agents that can perform operational workflows and risk analysis at the level of expert brokers. The platform manages the insurance workflow from reviewing complex submissions and matching them against underwriting appetite to policy review, billing, tax filings, endorsements, renewals, inspections and subjectivity collection.
The company says the automation changes the economics of traditional wholesale brokerage by allowing brokers to devote their time to relationships and business growth while gaining full visibility into underwriting status across carriers, a capability it says previously did not exist in the market. Novella says its model turns brokers into “super-producers” and enables them to reach profitability in half the time compared with legacy brokerages.
“While the first generation of insurtech companies focused on digitizing simpler insurance products such as auto and home policies, the world of complex risk remained untouched because of the difficulty involved in analyzing and placing these risks,” Kane said. “We believe pairing world-class human brokers with world-class AI is the formula for success. Vertical AI that deeply understands the complexity of our industry turns brokers into super-producers, allowing them to spend 100% of their time building relationships and growing their business.”
Kane said wholesale brokerage remains fundamentally relationship-driven, requiring a physical presence near brokers in the field.
“The support we’ve received from investors spanning both technology and traditional insurance gives us the precise combination needed to establish Novella as one of the top five wholesale brokerages in the U.S., with a goal of reaching $10 billion in premium within the next decade,” he said.
Chris Downer, general partner at Brewer Lane Ventures, said Novella is “disrupting the wholesale insurance market from the ground up.”
“Wholesale insurance has always depended on human relationships that take years to build, and Novella is the first company to effectively combine artificial intelligence with deep human expertise in the industry,” Downer said. “The company’s technology frees brokers from operational burden and makes them significantly more effective at their jobs. That’s why leading brokers are choosing to join the company, and why its platform is redefining the industry.”
Novella was selected for Lloyd’s Lab, the accelerator run by Lloyd’s of London. The company is licensed in all 50 U.S. states and has direct appointments with nearly 100 specialty insurance carriers and managing general agents, most of them limited-distribution agreements.
More than 3,500 retail insurance agencies are already appointed and sending business to Novella. Its customers include USI and Howden.
Five months after its public launch, the company reached a seven-figure revenue run rate.
Novella has 20 employees, half of them based at its Tel Aviv research and development center. The company plans to double its Israeli headcount in the coming months and is recruiting AI engineers and software developers.
Novella is headquartered in New York and recently opened offices in Texas and Florida. It plans to open another office in California during the current quarter.