Nirvana Insurance Raises $100 Million for AI Operating System

Trucking industry insurance company Nirvana has raised $100 million.

The company’s Series D round, announced last week, will allow it to bolster its operating system, which it says it constructed to combat the industry problem of slow decisions and innovation cycles that could stretch into years.

“Telematics and AI have changed that equation,” wrote Co-Founder and CEO Rushil Goel. “For the first time, it became possible to continuously learn from real-world driving behavior at scale, and to rebuild insurance around live signals rather than static assumptions.”

He added that Nirvana saw a chance to rethink that model, building the company as an “AI-native issuer” that employs data, machine learning and human expertise to improve and accelerate decisions on pricing, underwriting and claims.

“Because of that foundation, our teams can test, ship and iterate far faster than traditional carriers,” Goel added. “Over the past year alone, being AI-native has allowed us to release dozens of new features and platform enhancements, rapidly experiment across the insurance life cycle, and turn real-world outcomes into immediate improvements.”

The company said its systems let safe fleets get upfront discounts of up to 20%, based on driving behavior instead of “broad averages.” The systems can also “analyze risk and deliver precise quotes in minutes, giving fleets back their most valuable resource, time,” Goel said.

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has shown how crucial quicker decisions can be for the insurance industry.

“The industry’s math has changed. Affordable coverage attracts buyers; fast claims keep them coming back,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this year.

“Forty-six percent of insurance claimants say payment velocity is their top priority — eclipsing concerns like convenience, choice or security.”

Meanwhile, PYMNTS took a closer look at the way AI is impacting the insurance sector earlier this year in an interview with Aviad Pinkovezky, CEO of InsurTech platform First Connect.

He said that eventually, the technology will affect all aspects of the industry once the regulatory frameworks are hammered out, touching everything from pricing to claims construction.

First Connect’s AI efforts  have expedited the process of analyzing and approving, or rejecting, errors and omissions policies that agents need to upload to the company as part of their onboarding experience.

“There is some manual, human validation here, but at the end of the day, AI has proven to be a game changer,” Pinkovezky said.