Coverbase, an AI-powered procurement platform, has raised $16 million in a Series A round led by Canapi Ventures, the startup tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
Founded in 2024, San Francisco-based Coverbase aims to reinvent how enterprises vet and manage vendors in a “security-first” manner. Specifically, it uses artificial intelligence to automate and secure how large, regulated companies onboard new vendors and suppliers, such as software providers, consultants, contractors and service firms.
Coverbase counts Nationwide, Coinbase, Okta and the Navy Federal Credit Union among its customer base.
Co-founders CEO Clarence Chio and CTO Kao Zi Chong have impressive backgrounds. Chio also co-founded Unit21, a startup that helps businesses monitor fraudulent activities with its no-code software that has raised $92 million from the likes of Tiger Global Management. Chong is a former engineering manager at fintech giant Stripe.
The pair started Coverbase to automate the procurement process “by weaving risk, security, and compliance decision-making directly into every stage of intake, due diligence, contracting, and ongoing monitoring.”
“What makes us different is that our AI agents don’t just manage workflows, they actually perform the work,” Chio, who currently teaches AI and cybersecurity at UC Berkeley, told Crunchbase News.
Most competitors, he claims, build tools that help humans move through manual approval steps. (Competitors include the likes of Zip, Coupa, Ariba and Archer.) By being “AI-agents-first” instead of “workflow-first,” Coverbase allows customers to onboard vendors faster, with less friction and stronger security outcomes, according to Chio.
According to Verizon’s 1 Data Breach Investigations report, breaches involving third parties reached 30% this year, up 2x compared to 2024, “driven in part by vulnerability exploitation and business interruptions.”
Investors appear to be pouring more money into AI-powered procurement startups lately. Examples include:
- In late June, Levelpath, a provider of AI-enabled procurement tools, said it raised over $55 million in a Series B round led by Battery Ventures. The company’s platform uses AI agents to autonomously handle procurement tasks for businesses.
- In July, Parspec, a startup using artificial intelligence to improve efficiency in the construction industry supply chain, raised $20 million in a Series A funding round.
- In October 2024, procurement startup Zip saw its valuation jump 47% after raising a $190 million Series D led by Bond.
Fast growth
Existing and new investors including Fika Ventures, TTV Capital, Pear VC, Valley Bank and Founders You Should Know also participated in Coverbase’s Series A round. To date, the company has raised about $20 million. While Chio declined to reveal its valuation, he said the Series A represents “a roughly 4x increase” compared to its previously undisclosed $3.5 million seed round led by Fika.
Chio also declined to reveal hard revenue figures, noting that Coverbase’s customer base has grown 10x since the start of 2025. Overall, the startup has about 35 customers and operates on a usage-based SaaS pricing model that scales with the number of suppliers and risk assessments performed on its platform.
Its customers range in size, with some having as few as 50 suppliers, and others being larger companies with over 50,000 suppliers. Besides those mentioned above, customers include General Bank of Canada, Live Oak Bank, Coastal Bank, Thread Bank, LiveView Technologies, Guardant Health, Rubrik, Alteryx and Bill.
Coverbase is currently active in industries such as financial services, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and technology because they “demand high levels of compliance and security,” Chio noted.
But the company is also expanding into telecommunications and critical infrastructure, and sees future opportunities in other highly regulated sectors such as energy and utilities, defense contracting, government, aerospace and aviation, medical devices and biotech, and payments and logistics.
The company plans to use its new capital to expand into contract management and continuous security monitoring. It’s also planning to quadruple its sales force to meet “accelerating enterprise demand.” Presently, Coverbase has 12 employees.
‘A real and persistent pain point’
Walker Forehand, president and general partner at Canapi, said his firm was drawn to Coverbase because it believes the company is “solving a real and persistent pain point in enterprise procurement—particularly in highly regulated, security-conscious sectors.”
“Vendor onboarding is typically slow, fragmented, and risk-prone,” he wrote via email. “Coverbase is flipping that dynamic by using AI to make procurement faster, more secure, and strategically valuable.”
Forehand also believes that what sets Coverbase apart is its AI-native approach.
“This gives enterprises a faster, smarter, and more secure way to adopt innovation without adding operational burden,” he said. “It’s not just about efficiency — it’s about turning procurement into a competitive advantage, which is a fundamentally different mindset from traditional solutions.”
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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