General Magic, a Toronto-based AI company focused on insurance workflows, has raised an oversubscribed $7.2 million seed round to accelerate the development of its SMS-native AI agents. The financing was led by Radical Ventures, with significant participation from a16z Speedrun and new investment from Figma VP of Product Brendan O’Driscoll and Larry James Erwin from OpenAI. The company has raised $8.4 million to date, backed by Radical Ventures, a16z Speedrun, and Comma Capital, along with operators including Aidan Gomez, CEO of Cohere, and members of the executive team at Braze, including Kevin Wang, Chief Product Officer, and Spencer Burke, SVP of Growth.
General Magic is building AI agents designed to handle routine but time-consuming insurance tasks such as answering customer questions, collecting documents, and following up during quoting and claims processes. The platform connects directly to broker management systems, quoting and rating platforms, and CRMs, enabling agents to operate across pre-quote eligibility, post-quote engagement, and claims coordination without requiring insurers to replace their existing infrastructure.
At the center of the company’s offering is a product called Cell, a proactive AI agent that integrates with the systems insurance teams already use. Cell can be deployed across SMS, iMessage, and RCS, and can extend into policy, billing, and claims workflows. Customers can text Cell directly, or insurance teams can initiate outreach. The agent responds using real system data, requests missing information, follows up automatically, and updates records as workflows progress, keeping conversations in a single thread while preserving context.
In early deployments with one of the world’s largest general insurers and other large personal lines carriers, General Magic has reduced time-to-quote from roughly 30 minutes to about 3 minutes by automating routine clarification and follow-ups over SMS across auto and life insurance workflows. By increasing speed and reducing friction during post-quote engagement, the platform expands effective quoting capacity while helping prevent stalled conversations and lost customers.
The company is also building agents tailored to the regulatory and licensing realities of insurance distribution, including frameworks such as RIBO and OTL. By aligning agent behavior with how licensed professionals are trained to communicate coverage, General Magic aims to ensure interactions are compliant, accurate, and reflective of how insurance teams explain products to customers.
General Magic was founded by Anthony Azrak and Jai Mansukhani, second-time founders who previously sold AI products into legacy industries. The move into insurance stemmed from personal frustration after a prolonged and complex claims experience, which led the founders to examine the broader operational challenges facing brokers and carriers. They ultimately chose to focus deeply on insurance rather than remain a horizontal AI platform.
Industry dynamics reinforce the opportunity. Insurance retention rates lag other sectors, while customer acquisition costs remain significantly higher than the cost of retaining existing policyholders. As digital distribution accelerates and customers comparison shop more aggressively at renewal, carriers and brokers that fail to improve post-quote engagement risk losing revenue they have already worked to secure.
Looking ahead, General Magic plans to expand across additional insurance lines and workflows, concentrating on high-intent moments where coordination frequently breaks down. The long-term goal is to make follow-through automatic and invisible, reducing manual processes and fragmented handoffs so teams can focus more on serving customers.
KEY QUOTES:
“Too much of insurance still relies on manual follow through across calls, inboxes, and scattered systems. We focus on keeping customers engaged at every stage of the lifecycle, not just at quote or claim. Our agents handle the routine work that slows teams down, while giving insurance leaders real visibility into what customers are asking, where they are getting stuck, and how they are feeling. When that engagement and data flow directly into core systems, teams move faster and customers feel genuinely supported.”
Jai Mansukhani, Co-Founder and President Of General Magic
“Most of the world’s financial and insurance data is locked inside rigid, legacy systems that were never designed for the AI era. General Magic isn’t trying to convince enterprises to throw away that infrastructure. Instead, they are giving them a way to finally talk to it. By building a reasoning layer that sits on top of existing systems of record, the General Magic team are unlocking a massive amount of trapped value. This is how the Fortune 500 becomes AI-native. Not by rebuilding from scratch, but by bridging the gap between old data and new intelligence.”
Sanjana Basu, Partner At Radical Ventures
“We’ve watched Anthony and Jai grow exponentially both during their speedrun cohort and in the months after. They are building a truly compelling product that we believe will revolutionize workflows across insurance carriers and brokerages globally. I have a personal thesis that outsiders will disrupt legacy industries, and General Magic has helped buttress this thesis with the immense progress they’ve made. We are excited to deepen our partnership through supporting their seed round.”
Troy Kirwin, Investment Partner At a16z Speedrun
“What I have seen with General Magic and their approach to AI was a willingness to adapt to the insurance industry’s needs. This is significant because of the varied nuances of the insurance industry and how its products are distributed and why internal and external customer journeys are different. The challenge will be making it scale across all channels of insurance product distribution. This might be the first true ‘game changer’ for the industry and deliver on customer experience and expectations.”
Pete Tessier, BFA, CAIB, President At Insurance MGA Taycon Risk
