State Affairs announced $70 million in total funding to accelerate its AI-powered intelligence platform for policy and regulatory markets. Investors in the funding include Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Tru Arrow Partners, Alumni Ventures, Marcus Brauchli, Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann, and Richard Sarnoff. Brauchli is the former Executive Editor of The Washington Post and former Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal; Mather and Hansmann founded The Athletic; and Sarnoff is Chairman of Media, Education and Entertainment at KKR.
The company combines daily exclusive reporting, original data gathering, structured government data, and AI to help institutions understand and act on policy and regulatory developments. State Affairs is building real-time intelligence infrastructure for elected officials, government agencies, enterprises, and other organizations that make, influence, or respond to policy.
State Affairs said policy and regulatory markets can have a greater impact on organizations than financial markets, but the systems used to understand policy remain fragmented and slow. The company is building infrastructure to make policy developments easier to monitor, analyze, collaborate around, and act on.
The need for more policy intelligence has grown as state legislative activity has surged. In 2025, state legislatures introduced more than 135,500 bills, up roughly 55% from 87,500 in 2024. State Affairs said it would take one person reading nonstop for eight hours per day about six years to read every bill introduced in statehouses last year.
State Affairs’ platform is built on a combination of original reporting and government data. The company’s newsroom produces more than 2,000 originally reported, nonpartisan articles each month, while its data teams collect and structure policy information from statehouses and agencies across the country.
The platform turns exclusive reporting, public government data, and customer-specific context into real-time analysis, alerts, collaboration tools, and action workflows. State Affairs said this approach gives customers a deeper view of legislation, regulation, hearings, and political developments across all 50 states and the federal government.
State Affairs’ AI intelligence layer is powered by journalists embedded in state capitols, on-the-ground legislative and regulatory data gathering, and structured government data across state and federal sources. The company said this combination creates a proprietary data foundation for policy and regulatory intelligence.
The platform is already used by one-third of state and federal elected officials. Enterprise customers include Walmart, Mastercard, and McDonald’s.
Lawmakers, legislative staff, agencies, and enterprise teams use State Affairs to understand policy developments in real time, analyze and compare bills across states, collaborate around important policy changes, and coordinate outreach and advocacy efforts.
State Affairs was founded by Evan Burns and Jamie Roberts Seltzer. Burns previously co-founded and served as CEO of The Finnish Long Drink, and Seltzer is co-founder and General Partner at LightShed Ventures. Veteran journalist Alison Bethel serves as Founding Editor-in-Chief and Chief Content Officer.
The company operates at the intersection of technology, nonpartisan journalism, and government. With the new funding, State Affairs plans to expand its platform, continue investing in original reporting, and strengthen the policy intelligence layer used by public-sector and enterprise customers.
KEY QUOTES:
“Policy and regulatory markets are often more impactful to organizations than financial markets, yet everybody from voters to companies are often the last to know what’s happening. State Affairs helps organizations proactively understand and engage with policy markets at scale across the U.S.”
Evan Burns, Co-Founder and CEO of State Affairs
“We need more nonpartisan journalism to build a better democracy and future. Because nearly all state capitols are underreported on, the exclusive reporting and original data gathering that powers our platform not only provides more comprehensive information, it also mandates that we further invest into objective journalism to widen the moat of the intelligence you get on State Affairs versus anywhere else. We intend to hire many more full-time reporters over the next few years.”
Jamie Roberts Seltzer, Co-Founder of State Affairs
