Insurtech General Magic, an AI company headquartered in Toronto, is building SMS native AI agents that power insurance workflows through natural language, closed an oversubscribed $7.2 mn seed round to accelerate deployment of SMS-based AI agents designed for insurance operations.
The round was led by Radical Ventures with participation from Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun and new backing from Brendan O’Driscoll of Figma and Larry James Erwin of OpenAI. Total capital raised now stands at $8.4 mn.
The platform translates customer messages into actions across core insurance systems, making it possible to quote, service, renew, and manage claims entirely over text.
The company believes natural language will be the default interface for getting work done. General Magic is focused on leading that shift in insurance, starting with SMS.
The company’s pitch is operational compression. Its AI agents automate routine follow-ups, document collection and customer coordination across pre-quote, post-quote and claims workflows.
Early deployments with large personal lines insurers reduced time-to-quote from roughly 30 minutes to under 3 minutes, largely through automated clarification over SMS.
General Magic reports inbound calls dropped 30% in early rollouts, while teams saved more than 250 hours per month. The platform connects directly to broker management systems, quoting engines and CRMs, pushing conversation data back into core systems rather than creating parallel workflows.
The flagship product, Cell, operates as a proactive AI agent embedded in existing infrastructure. Customers text questions.
The agent pulls live system data, requests missing details, follows up automatically and updates records as processes advance. Conversations persist in a single thread. Context remains intact.
Co-founder and President Jai Mansukhani said insurance remains dependent on manual coordination across calls, inboxes and fragmented portals. The company aims to automate that follow-through layer while giving insurers visibility into friction points, sentiment and stalled interactions.
“Too much of insurance still relies on manual follow through across calls, inboxes, and scattered systems,” said Jai Mansukhani.
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.
Jai Mansukhani, Co Founder and President of General Magic
“When that engagement and data flow directly into core systems, teams move faster and customers feel genuinely supported.”
General Magic is tailoring agents to reflect insurance licensing frameworks, including RIBO and OTL exams, aligning language and compliance posture with how brokers and advisors communicate coverage.
According to Beinsure, compliance-aware conversational agents represent a critical adoption threshold for regulated financial services.
The founding team, Anthony Azrak and Jai Mansukhani, previously built and exited AI products serving legacy industries.
Their move into insurance followed personal claims friction that exposed coordination failures across quoting and servicing.
Retention economics frame the opportunity. Customer acquisition costs in insurance continue to rise, while post-quote drop-off remains a pressure point. Automating engagement during high-intent windows may improve close rates and renewal persistence.
- Radical Ventures partner Sanjana Basu said the company is building a reasoning layer over legacy systems rather than replacing them.
- Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun’s Troy Kirwin described the founders as positioned to disrupt insurance distribution from outside traditional industry channels.
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.
Sanjana Basu, partner at Radical Ventures commented
“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 commented.
General Magic plans to expand across additional lines and workflows, focusing on coordination gaps where follow-through breaks down.
The long-term thesis centers on making operational handoffs automatic and reducing reliance on manual chase sequences across the insurance stack.
