Factify, a startup aiming to replace static PDFs with what it calls “Factified” documents, announced it has raised $73 million in seed funding to build a new document standard designed for AI-driven business workflows. The round was led by Valley Capital Partners and included participation from technology and business leaders, including John Giannandrea, former Head of AI at Google and SVP of AI at Apple, Ken Moelis, founder of Moelis & Co., and Peter Brown, CEO of quantitative hedge fund Renaissance Technologies.
The company is positioning its platform as an overhaul of how core business records are created and governed, aiming to drive widespread adoption of PDFs across contracts, agreements, compliance records, and other high-stakes documentation. Factify argues that while PDFs became the default business file format decades ago, the underlying document model has not kept pace with modern requirements, including verifiable version control, access visibility, provenance, and machine-readability.
Factify says its approach treats the document itself as the governed system of record. Each Factified Document is designed to carry its own identity, access rules, version history, and embedded intelligence, while also recording meaningful events in a permanent audit log. The company also says workflows that typically sit outside documents, including approvals, signatures, redaction, expiration, and compliance checks, can occur natively within the document.
The startup is initially focused on regulated and document-intensive industries, including banking, insurance, legal services, human resources, and operations. Factify says legal teams can use its documents to enforce NDAs before granting access, limit visibility to specific sections, and establish which version is authoritative. It also describes operational use cases such as vendor onboarding and approvals managed directly within documents, replacing processes spread across email, shared folders, and disconnected tools.
Founder and CEO Matan Gavish founded Factify in late 2023 after years of academic research on document systems. The company notes that Gavish began publishing research at Stanford University in 2012 with Professor David Donoho and later served on the faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a computer science professor, continuing his focus on document technology.
Factify said the new capital will be used to expand its engineering team, deepen the core platform, and work with early enterprise partners in highly regulated environments. The company is also expanding its U.S. presence and said it plans to establish Pittsburgh as a major hub for customer engagement and operations.
KEY QUOTES
“Replacing the PDF is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. We don’t just want to solve the inadequacies of the PDF – we want to do it in a way that creates a bedrock for post-AI businesses. PDFs remain the last major holdout of the pre-digital world inside document-heavy organizations. Layering outdated tools like digital signatures on top of static files only makes companies less future-proof, especially as AI moves into core business workflows. Forward-looking companies want software investments that compound over time. What’s missing is a new foundation that enables compounding software and AI investments in regulated industries. That’s what Factify is building.”
Matan Gavish, Founder and CEO, Factify
“What drew us to Factify is that this is not a feature or a productivity layer. It is a fundamental rethinking of what a document is at a time when AI is starting to act on business information. The team is building a new default for trust, governance, and automation, and that kind of foundation only comes along once every few decades.”
Steve O’Hara, Founder and Managing Partner, Valley Capital Partners
“Factify is fundamentally changing the way the world does business and Pittsburgh is proud to welcome them to our community. Our region has a history of innovation and opportunities for next generation technology companies like Factify, who are revolutionizing documents. Bringing cutting-edge companies like Factify to Pittsburgh helps develop our workforce and tap into homegrown talent that will continue to lead the world’s digital evolution.”
Corey O’Connor, Mayor, Pittsburgh
“We’re excited to welcome Factify to the United States and Pittsburgh. Having a global company choose to locate in our region where technology meets innovation speaks volumes to the eco-system that we have created here. The Pittsburgh region is not just a place where companies are launched but is also a place where companies come to build core systems and technologies.”
Stefani Pashman, CEO, Allegheny Conference on Community Development
