Polygrade, an AI-native claims management platform for the warranty industry, has emerged from stealth with $6.3 million in funding. The investment came from Construct Capital, American Family Ventures, and Nine Four Ventures. The company is starting with home warranty claims and aims to automate work that existing software only records, routes, or tracks.
An Overlooked Software Category
Warranty claims management has received less attention from modern software providers than adjacent sectors such as field service management and insurance. Polygrade argues that current tools mainly record information, route tickets, and track claims rather than perform the work. By applying specialized AI agents to the full claim lifecycle, the company wants to change the economics of warranty claims.
How the AI Agents Work
Polygrade's platform sits above a warranty company's existing technology stack and converts data into operational actions. It builds a proprietary intelligence graph across policies, claims, decisions, and outcomes, allowing each claim to inform future decisions. The system supports five stages of the claim lifecycle: first notice of loss, pre-dispatch triage, authorization, parts procurement, and payment.
Leadership With Deep Industry Roots
Polygrade was founded by home services and warranty industry veterans with experience at Sears Home Services, Thumbtack, and Setter. CEO David Steckel previously founded Setter, which was acquired by Thumbtack, and later served as Chief Product Officer at Sears Home Services. CTO Eui Chung and Head of Product Kaustubh Vongole also helped lead AI transformation and product strategy at Sears Home Services.
Early Traction and Customer Validation
Polygrade is already in production with enterprise warranty companies, including Fidelity National Home Warranty and Cinch Home Services. The company also works with suppliers such as Encompass, UED, Sibi, and Marcone. Early deployments have identified unnecessary service visits, repairs unlikely to resolve an issue, and procurement overspend, helping clients reduce claim severity and operating costs.
Human Oversight and Traceability
Polygrade's AI agents operate within rules and thresholds established by each warranty company, with exceptions escalated for human review. The company says its recommendations are designed to be traceable rather than acting as a black box. This approach allows automation to function as an advisor, a co-pilot, or an automated action depending on a client's comfort level and existing policies.
Investor Confidence
Construct Capital co-founder and managing partner Rachel Holt said the team has an unusual combination of deep domain expertise and technical experience. She noted that applying AI to a complex enterprise workflow requires more than building a model. The firm believes Polygrade can become the intelligence and execution layer for a massive category that modern software has largely overlooked.
Funding Strategy and Market Expansion
The company will use the funding to expand its Forward Deployed Engineering, go-to-market, and partner enablement teams. It plans to move beyond home warranty into extended warranty, OEM warranty, and equipment breakdown insurance. Founder and CEO David Steckel said the infrastructure for managing claims that end with a physical repair or replacement will look very different in an AI-native world.
Polygrade's emergence highlights a broader shift toward practical AI agents in complex enterprise workflows. Its approach avoids wholesale system replacement by operating above existing tools and escalating exceptions for human review. By targeting an industry that has long relied on manual processes, the company is positioning itself as an execution layer for warranty claims at scale.