Pie announced that it has raised $19.5 million in Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The round brings Pie’s total funding to $23.7 million. The financing included participation from Capital One Ventures, Max Levchin’s SciFi VC, F-Prime, Commerce Ventures, WEX Venture Capital, and existing investors.
Pie also announced its emergence from stealth and launched Front Desk, an AI product that answers calls for small business owners around the clock, takes bookings and reservations, and responds to customer questions.
Pie is an AI-powered growth platform designed to help small businesses get found, capture demand, and convert customer intent into revenue.
The company was founded by former Square and Toast operators Syed Ali and Akhil Mantripragada.
The founders spent years building products for small businesses and saw a recurring challenge: many owners did not need another software tool as much as they needed more customers.
Since launching its first AI-powered growth product in late 2025, Pie has reached thousands of small business customers while operating in stealth.
The company has grown largely through referrals and platform partnerships.
Pie’s product suite includes AI Search, Growth, and Front Desk.
AI Search helps businesses show up as local discovery shifts into AI-powered search experiences such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.
Growth helps businesses acquire customers across high-intent local channels such as Google Maps, Yelp, Nextdoor, and other digital platforms.
Front Desk helps businesses capture demand by answering calls, taking bookings, and responding to customer questions.
Together, the products are designed to help small businesses create demand, improve discoverability, and convert customer interest into measurable revenue.
Pie said many small businesses have historically been priced out of enterprise-grade growth tools or forced to rely on agency models that can cost $2,500 to $5,000 per month, require long-term contracts, and provide limited transparency.
The company gives small and midsize businesses access to an always-on growth platform that can optimize profiles, create content, improve local discovery across channels, and capture customer demand at a lower cost than traditional agencies.
Pie reaches small businesses directly and through embedded partnerships with vertical software platforms.
The company said this distribution model is designed to scale across categories such as auto repair, pet care, fitness, and beauty services.
For software partners, Pie can turn their platforms into integrated growth suites that help merchants acquire customers while supporting retention, incremental SaaS revenue, and increases in transaction-based revenue.
Pie said its platform has driven more than 100,000 phone calls to small businesses.
Customers typically see a 15% to 20% increase in year-over-year sales, according to the company.
The Series A funding will help Pie scale its platform distribution model, deepen its product suite, and grow its team.
The company said it is building the growth infrastructure layer for Main Street businesses by combining embedded distribution, local business data, and AI-powered automation.
KEY QUOTES:
“Small business owners have been stuck with expensive, opaque agency models for decades. Every owner I talked to said some version of the same thing: ‘I need more customers, and I can’t afford an agency.’ We built Pie to fix that problem and bring enterprise-grade growth capabilities to the small businesses that power local economies.”
Syed Ali, Co-Founder and CEO of Pie
“Pie is bringing AI to Main Street by starting with one of the biggest pain points for small business owners: finding new customers. Customer acquisition is a powerful entry point, but the broader vision is to build an AI platform that can support small businesses across more of their daily operations over time. Syed and Akhil have built a product that solves an immediate revenue problem today while laying the foundation for something much larger.”
Aaron Frank, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners
“Small businesses are notoriously hard to build for and even harder to reach, but the Pie team seems to have the rare combination of founder-market fit, distribution strategy, and product velocity to win this historically challenging market.”
Max Levchin, Founder of Affirm and PayPal
“Pie has made local marketing incredibly simple to manage across our 65 salons. The platform’s intuitive UI allows us to launch campaigns quickly and get locations up and running in a fraction of the time it takes with traditional agencies. We maintain full control over our monthly spend, avoid expensive agency retainers, and consistently see measurable results. Most importantly, we’re driving double-digit year-over-year sales growth across our locations.”
Jason Siska, Vice President of Moxie Management Group
“At Tekmetric, we’re focused on helping auto repair shop owners grow their businesses, not just run them. Pie’s approach to digital growth marketing aligns closely with that vision by helping shops reach more local customers, generate demand, and drive incremental revenue in a way that is simple for businesses. Together, we’re bringing a practical, data-driven growth solution to the independent auto repair industry.”
Sunil Patel, Founder and CEO of Tekmetric
