Ande, a New York-based AI-powered corporate entertainment platform, has emerged from stealth with more than $52 million in combined seed and Series A funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Duration Ventures, and Sierra Ventures, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures. The financing will support the expansion of Ande’s technology platform, which helps enterprises manage corporate entertainment spending while connecting businesses directly with hospitality venues and other entertainment providers.
Founded by CEO Lohit Sarma, Ande is developing what it describes as an AI-native operating system for corporate entertainment.
The company’s platform brings together corporate event planning, venue discovery, booking, approvals, contracts, payments, and expense reconciliation within a single workspace.
Ande estimates that businesses spend approximately $325 billion annually on entertainment, including client dinners, team outings, catering, sporting events, and corporate gifts.
Despite the size of this market, many companies continue to manage entertainment spending through disconnected credit cards, accounts payable systems, spreadsheets, and consumer booking applications.
This fragmentation can create substantial administrative work for finance teams while making it difficult for organizations to maintain consistent spending controls.
Ande addresses these challenges through AI-powered workflows that help employees identify suitable venues, confirm availability, arrange experiences, secure internal approvals, execute contracts, and reconcile expenses.
Its platform is designed for executive assistants, office managers, field marketers, sales teams, and other employees responsible for planning corporate events and managing business relationships.
The software also enables finance and legal teams to maintain oversight of spending, approvals, and contractual obligations.
According to Ande, more than 60 enterprises currently use its platform, reporting savings of approximately 12% to 15%.
Its customers include Cloudflare, Salesforce, McGraw Hill, Netskope, Navan, Sigma Computing, Monday.com, Workato, Semgrep, Checkout, and Rillet.
Collectively, customers account for more than $400 million in annual entertainment spending flowing through the platform.
Ande has also developed a substantial network of hospitality and entertainment providers.
Its platform currently includes more than 93,000 entertainment venues across over 90 cities, providing corporate customers with access to a broad selection of event and hospitality options.
The company has established partnerships with approximately 1,600 hospitality venues, including major restaurant and hospitality groups such as Nobu, Tao Group Hospitality, The Mina Group, Altamarea Group, JKS, and Wolfgang Puck.
For entertainment providers, Ande offers a direct channel to corporate customers, enabling venues to market their services and manage bookings from enterprise clients.
The company spent approximately two and a half years developing its venue network, digitizing hospitality information, and training AI models for corporate entertainment workflows.
Ande’s technology is designed to create a connected marketplace serving both businesses seeking entertainment services and venues seeking access to corporate customers.
The new financing will support its efforts to expand that network and further automate the booking and financial processes associated with corporate entertainment.
KEY QUOTES:
“Entertainment is one of the most important things a company does. It builds culture, closes deals and deepens the relationships that matter most. Yet the infrastructure to manage it is broken on both sides of every transaction. Ande is the first enterprise channel between corporate buyers and the world’s best entertainment vendors. Part of the reason this is such a hard problem to solve is that venues and entertainment providers don’t have a centralized distribution system to plug into. We had to build it. We’ve spent two and half years working with venues to digitize their data, and train models and agents for these workflows that are unique to enterprises.”
Lohit Sarma, Co-Founder and CEO of Ande
“Our programs are high stakes and high visibility, with our executive leadership team and key customers at the core of each event we host. My team and I trust Ande’s platform, and especially the team behind it. I have real-time visibility into what’s happening across every event, and when I need something done right, I know it will be. My team is now focused on reaching the executives that matter and scaling the program vs. worrying about the logistics.”
Vicky Chung, Director of Corporate Events at Netskope
“Entertainment is every enterprise’s biggest expense line that is not yet well managed. For that reason, there are financial inefficiencies and a poor experience. Ande is the connective tissue, the perfect handshake between corporations and venues. Lohit is an exceptional founder, and the size of the market opportunity is largely unbounded.”
Arif Janmohamed, Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners and Co-Founder of Duration Ventures
“Particularly when we invest in an early-stage company, our confidence has everything to do with the founder and their ambition. Lohit has both startup DNA and the enterprise experience to solve this problem. His vision for Ande is bold and ambitious.”
Alex Bard, Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures
