Ciridae, the San Francisco-based AI transformation firm building operating systems for real economy businesses, has raised $20 million in seed funding led by Accel, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Sunflower Capital, and Backcountry Ventures. The company was founded by CEO Jack Soslow, a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz and data scientist at Meta, and CTO Jack Weissenberger, a former engineering team leader at Salesforce and Head of ML at Teneyx.
The capital will be used to expand Ciridae’s engineering team and accelerate its mission of bringing AI transformation to businesses that the industry has largely overlooked.
Ciridae targets mid-market companies in sectors such as restoration, logistics, healthcare, construction, and industrial services, where operations run on tribal knowledge, legacy ERPs, and manual processes with no AI team and no realistic path to building one. The company embeds directly with each customer, transforms core workflows into AI-native software, and runs it in production as mission-critical infrastructure, with implementation timelines as short as two weeks compared to the typical 18 months. Global AI spending is projected to hit $2.5 trillion in 2026, yet fewer than 5% of pilots ever reach production, a gap Ciridae said is sharpest outside the Fortune 500.
Ciridae’s initial focus is private equity-backed companies, where the drive to improve operations is structural rather than aspirational. The company is already supporting customers including PE funds with more than $1.3 trillion in assets under management. Ciridae recently debuted the Ciridae AI Index, which evaluates PE firms and companies based on their AI transformation readiness, assessing associated risk and opportunity. The company hired its first employee in February 2025 and reached high seven figures in run-rate revenue within six months of selling, remaining cash flow positive throughout.
Unlike horizontal AI tools, Ciridae focuses on deeply integrated systems that reflect how businesses actually operate, with an emphasis on workforce productivity and execution at scale in sectors where margins depend on operational efficiency. The company said the old playbook of financial engineering without operational transformation is breaking, and that AI represents the new lever for value creation in the mid-market. Ciridae said it is already seeing strong demand from firms looking to move beyond AI experimentation and into full production deployment.
KEY QUOTES:
“We built Ciridae to solve one of the quieter failures of the AI boom: the companies that stand to benefit most from AI have no way of actually adopting it. We believe the biggest AI opportunity is not adding another layer of enterprise software, but building the operating infrastructure for the businesses the industry has largely passed by.”
Jack Soslow, CEO and Co-Founder, Ciridae
“The old playbook of financial engineering without operational transformation is breaking. AI is the new lever. Ciridae combines world-class AI talent with operators who can actually implement change, delivering production systems in days. That’s why they’re already becoming the partner of choice for some of the most sophisticated companies.”
Christine Esserman, Partner, Accel
“Ciridae challenged us to elevate our thinking. They built a transformative AI operating system that powers and connects every core part of our business.”
Bryan Knodel, CFO, Knight Commercial
