Ema secures $77M in funding as AI begins transforming enterprise software and services

Ema, a startup building teams of AI agents that automate corporate workflows in HR, IT, and finance, has secured $77 million in Series B funding as it pushes to absorb work historically done by enterprise software and IT services firms. The round, led by Bengaluru-based venture firm Creaegis, brings the company's total funding to $140 million and signals how aggressively AI startups are now competing for budgets once reserved for traditional software vendors.

Details of the Round

Existing backers Accel, Section 32, and Prosus increased their positions in the financing, which pushes Ema's valuation to more than four times its 2024 level. The company declined to reveal the exact figure. Ema confirmed to TechCrunch that the round consisted entirely of primary equity, with no debt or secondary transactions involved.

Founded in 2023 by Surojit Chatterjee, formerly of Google and Coinbase, and Souvik Sen, a former Okta executive, Ema markets what it calls "AI employees" — systems that coordinate multiple agents to execute multi-step business processes across a company's existing applications, rather than tackling one task at a time.

Positioning Against SaaS and AI Labs

Chatterjee believes the model will gradually reduce companies' dependence on conventional software, including SaaS products. Ema first "wraps" around an enterprise's existing tools, he explained, before customers can cut back on some of them — or in some cases drop them entirely.

"Many of our customers are already on the way to replace [large SaaS applications] completely, removing dependency on them, because they are mostly becoming like a database," Chatterjee said.

Meanwhile, major AI labs are pushing into the same enterprise territory: Anthropic has been working to bring Claude into financial and legal operations, and OpenAI has built teams of forward-deployed engineers to embed AI in customer environments. Chatterjee does not view them as direct rivals. Ema's platform draws on more than 150 models, spanning frontier and open-source options, while the startup concentrates on the domain expertise, integrations, and orchestration required for end-to-end process automation.

"Progress in frontier models is actually very beneficial to us," he said.

Growth Metrics and Business Model

Traction appears solid. Ema counts more than 50 active enterprise deals and over 1 million active enterprise users, and has processed more than 5 million actions and queries. Its customer roster includes NTT DATA, Hitachi, ADP, PwC, Google, KPMG, Wipro, and Microsoft.

Revenue has grown 50-fold over the past two years, with bookings exceeding $150 million. Chatterjee clarified that the bookings number reflects the total value of multiyear contracts — two- and three-year deals — rather than annual recurring revenue, and he declined to share the current annualized run rate. More than 90% of customers have expanded past their initial use case, some across dozens of workflows, and the company's net dollar retention sits around 180%.

Ema also aims to take over implementation, integration, and consulting work that firms traditionally hire IT services providers to perform. "A lot of the services companies are working with us," Chatterjee said. "They are also dramatically changing or disrupting their own business models because they understand the human-forward model may not be the best model going forward."

Even while absorbing work usually handled by vendors and consultancies, Ema reports gross margins near 80%, aided by AI systems that need less human support as they learn from deployments. Pricing is tied to completed tasks and business outcomes rather than software seats or token consumption.

What Comes Next

Much of the new capital will fund go-to-market expansion, particularly sales and marketing, after the company's early years focused on product development. The Mountain View-headquartered startup now employs nearly 200 people across offices in Bengaluru, London, and Vancouver. Having concentrated on U.S. and European customers so far, Ema plans to enter new markets over the coming year, especially across Asia-Pacific, South America, and parts of the Middle East — regions where enterprises are increasingly weighing AI agents against conventional software spending.

Meta description: Ema raises $77 million in Series B funding led by Creaegis to scale its AI employee platform, reaching $140 million in total funding as it challenges SaaS.

Tags: Ema, AI agents, enterprise software, Series B funding, SaaS

Featured image: Abstract illustration of interconnected AI agent nodes forming a workflow network in deep blue and teal tones.