Insurtech Irys pulled in a $12.5 mn seed round led by Markd, joined by Deepwork Capital, Florida Opportunity Fund, Ansay & Associates, HICO Ventures, and JMG Capital.
The cash is earmarked for hiring more engineers, speeding up deployments, and building distribution across the US and Canada.
The raise also follows Markd’s own $500 mn fund, showing capital still chases infrastructure plays in insurtech.
Irys, established in 2021, is an open API software platform with a mission to break down the barriers erected by large legacy competitors.
Margeaux Giles, CEO of Irys, said her frustration as an agency owner drove the company’s design. For 15 years she used platforms that didn’t care if they worked.
Contracts, broken tools, empty promises – the industry ran on them. That eroded client trust, she said, and agents couldn’t repair it. Irys wants to.
The industry has been trapped in contracts, broken platforms, and empty promises. It has eroded the trust agents work so hard to build with their clients. Irys is how we fix that.
Margeaux Giles, Chief Executive Officer of Irys
The company built an AI-native, integration-agnostic operating system that ties together financials, operations, sales, and client data. Real-time. It talks across tools and between AI agents, letting automation expand capacity and profitability without throwing more staff at the problem.
Giles pointed to the math. Basic automation can boost a service rep’s book from $200k to $500k. If that’s what simple AI can pull off, she said, think about what agentic AI might do once a company can actually implement it.
Already Irys runs inside brokerages and MGAs with nearly $1bn in written premium. To scale further, it’s forming agency cohorts to test a no-migration onboarding process. No painful data transfers, no endless transitions.
Investors see it as more than an upgrade. Parker Beauchamp, managing partner at Markd, said leaders are tired of bolting on third-party apps just to patch legacy systems.
Irys, in his words, is not just another agency management system – it’s the spine. CRM, analytics, accounting, tasks, documents – all live in one platform.
The timing fits broader market sentiment. Gallagher Re’s data shows insurtech funding climbed 28 percent last quarter.
Money is swinging toward platforms that change infrastructure itself, not just shiny front ends. Irys leans into that shift with decentralized architecture, open APIs, and AI agents baked into the foundation.
Irys is not just a new agency management system. It is the entire backbone. It runs customer relationship management, analytics, accounting, tasks, and document management in one unified platform. It is the infrastructure that works.
Parker Beauchamp, Managing Partner at Markd
Giles said OpenAI and Google set new baselines every few weeks, and insurance can’t afford to lag. She called Irys the bridge between bleeding-edge AI innovation and a sector that’s risk-averse by design.
Next up, the company plans to grow engineering and customer success teams, deepen partner channels, and roll out AI-driven modules for accounting, analytics, and submission management in early 2026. Maybe the start of a backbone insurers actually want to use.
In 2023, Irys Insurtech has closed a seed funding round of $3.5 mn led by Markd, known for its keen interest in groundbreaking insurtech innovations, marking its entrance into the market dominated by stagnant legacy agency management systems.
This investment heralds a new era where traditional insurance distribution processes are challenged and redefined.
Insurance venture capital firm Markd has reopened its debut fund to secure up to $500 m in new commitments, with the potential for further expansion before year-end, according to Beinsure.
The additional capital will reinforce Markd’s strategy of investing exclusively in the future of the insurance industry, backing private companies that can deliver both strong returns and strategic innovation for insurers and their distribution partners.
The firm also indicated it may pursue a more acquisitive approach, taking larger ownership stakes in select targets.
Markd launched its first fund in 2022 with $100 mn, deploying capital across 68 investments in 22 active portfolio companies.
Based in Boulder, Colorado, Markd manages capital on behalf of insurance companies. Named after historical fire marks, the firm’s identity reflects its deep roots in insurance and its focus on modernising the sector through venture investment.
