Ciridae, a firm that builds AI operating systems for mid-market businesses, has closed a $20 million seed round. The company says its goal is to bring production-ready artificial intelligence to sectors that have largely been passed over by the current wave of AI investment. CEO Jack Soslow co-founded Ciridae after working as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and a data scientist at Meta. His co-founder and CTO, Jack Weissenberger, previously led engineering at Salesforce and served as Head of ML at Teneyx.
The market gap Ciridae is targeting is real and measurable. A 2025 RSM survey found that while 91% of middle-market companies reported using generative AI in some capacity, only one in four said it was fully integrated into their core operations and workflows. Using AI in a limited way is one thing. Running it as infrastructure that keeps a business going is quite another. For companies without a dedicated technology team, that second step has been very hard to take. Many of these businesses still rely on institutional knowledge, legacy software, and manual processes that general-purpose AI tools were not built to handle.
Accel led the seed round, with Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Sunflower Capital, and Backcountry Ventures also participating.
The adoption gap is not just wide. It is structural. OECD data from 2024 shows that around 40% of firms with 250 or more employees were actively using AI, compared to roughly 12% of firms with between 10 and 49 employees. Bigger companies have IT departments, vendor relationships, and the budget to run pilots and fix what does not work. Mid-sized businesses in construction, home services, or industrial distribution generally have none of that.
General-purpose AI platforms are part of the problem. These tools are built to serve many industries at once, which means they require significant customization, technical know-how, and internal resources to get working. For a logistics company or a restoration firm, the cost and complexity of doing that themselves is often prohibitive. Ciridae's model is to step in and do it for them.
Its early clients include private equity-backed businesses in home services, healthcare, construction, and industrial distribution. PE firms representing more than $1.3 trillion in assets under management are already working with the company, a sign that financially sophisticated operators view the service as a practical tool rather than an experiment.
"The old playbook of financial engineering without operational transformation is breaking. AI is the new lever. Ciridae combines world-class AI talent with operators who can actually implement change, delivering production systems in days. That's why they're already becoming the partner of choice for some of the most sophisticated companies." — Christine Esserman, Partner at Accel
The new capital will go primarily toward expanding the engineering team. Ciridae hired its first employee in February 2025 and reached high seven-figure annual run-rate revenue within six months of its first sale, staying cash flow positive the entire time. For a company at the seed stage, that is an unusual combination of speed and discipline.
The funding is not meant to subsidize growth. It is meant to scale what is already working. Rather than raising money to figure out the model, Ciridae built the model first. The new capital accelerates hiring and product development from a position of early commercial proof.
The company has also released the Ciridae AI Index, a framework it developed to assess how well private equity firms and their portfolio companies are positioned for AI adoption. The index evaluates both the risk of falling behind and the opportunity to move ahead. It positions Ciridae as something closer to an operational advisor than a software vendor.
Ciridae's founding premise is that AI adoption has failed in mid-market businesses not because the technology is too complex, but because nobody has done the implementation work for them. Most companies in these sectors cannot internally identify which processes to automate, design software around those processes, and then keep it running.
The company addresses this by embedding directly with each customer. Engineers and business partners spend time on site, learn how the business operates, and build custom software around its actual workflows. The result is not a generic platform adjusted with a few settings. It is purpose-built software, specific to that company, designed to handle scheduling, procurement, accounts payable and receivable, customer order management, and financial reporting.
Ciridae calls this an AI operating system. The term refers to a single integrated layer of software that replaces the mix of ERPs, spreadsheets, and disconnected tools that most industrial businesses rely on today. An ERP, or enterprise resource planning system, is software companies use to manage core business functions. Implementation typically takes as little as two weeks, compared to the 18 months often associated with enterprise software rollouts. Each deployment also feeds back into the company's platform, making future implementations faster.
"Ciridae challenged us to elevate our thinking. They built a transformative AI operating system that powers and connects every core part of our business." — Bryan Knodel, CFO of Knight Commercial
Knight Commercial reported $5 million in annual revenue uplift and $8 million in free cash flow improvement after working with Ciridae, along with full automation of its accounts payable invoice processing.
Accel led the seed round. Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Sunflower Capital, and Backcountry Ventures also invested. Both Accel and a16z are among the most active investors in enterprise software, and their joint participation at the seed stage is notable given the relatively early stage of the company.
Soslow's background as a former Andreessen Horowitz partner gives him a direct prior relationship with one of his investors. Weissenberger brings hands-on machine learning infrastructure experience from Salesforce and Teneyx. This is Ciridae's first disclosed institutional funding round.
