Windmill, an AI company building what it calls the “context graph for your people,” has announced a $12 million fundraise led by Inspired Capital. The seed round also included participation from Primary Venture Partners, Founder Collective, and Oceans Ventures. Windmill’s core thesis is that the biggest workforce transformation in a generation is not only a technology problem, but a people problem, and that companies need better infrastructure to support, develop, and understand their employees in the age of AI.
Navigating the New AI Workplace
The rise of artificial intelligence is reshaping how companies operate. Management layers are shrinking, roles are merging, and entire functions are being redefined by what AI can now do. As AI gives individual employees more leverage, Windmill argues that the value of each person’s complex, creative, and high-judgment work is increasing rather than decreasing.
This shift requires companies to manage capability, potential, and human judgment with far more precision. Windmill co-founder Brian Distelburger argues that although executives often say people are their most important asset, most companies still lack deep systems for understanding whether the right people are in the right roles and working on the right things.
According to Windmill, critical knowledge about who is doing what, who is growing, who is underused, and who improves the people around them often lives only in managers’ heads. That makes workforce decisions lossy, biased, and difficult to act on at scale. Without this context, AI agents cannot reliably help identify high-performing teams, surface bottlenecks, or staff important projects.
The “Context Graph” Solution
Windmill addresses this problem by building what it describes as a context graph for people — a continuously updated and cited understanding of a company’s workforce. The system is designed to organize scattered information about employees, their work, expectations, and workplace perspectives into a more structured foundation for decision-making.
The context graph is built around four categories: people, evidence, expectations, and perspectives. In Windmill’s framing, this means understanding who people are and how they connect, what actually happened, what good work looks like, and what people think. Each insight is designed to trace back to specific workplace sources such as Slack threads, pull requests, or documentation.
CEO Max Shaw says important context about work and people is often scattered across apps, notes, conversations, and manager memory. Windmill’s goal is to create the systematic layer of context needed before AI agents can be meaningfully involved in sensitive people-related decisions.
Empowering HR’s Strategic Role
Windmill positions HR as the function best equipped to lead the people side of AI transformation. The company argues that HR already understands organizational design, talent development, change management, and culture, making it central to helping companies adapt as AI changes how work gets done.
As organizations become flatter and faster-moving, strategic workforce adjustments can no longer rely only on annual planning cycles. Companies need a clearer, more current understanding of whether employees are in the right roles and operating effectively within the company’s specific environment.
Windmill argues that traditional tools such as annual surveys and spreadsheets are not enough for this new environment. To lead effectively, HR teams need real-time context about what is happening with people across the organization.
Practical Applications and Product Vision
Windmill’s first product focuses on performance reviews, which the company describes as one of the most broken processes in the workplace. The platform integrates with Slack, GitHub, Google Workspace, and more than 30 other workplace tools so reviews can be grounded in actual work rather than starting from a blank page. According to the company, its reviews are completed 90% faster and have reached 93% employee satisfaction.
These AI-assisted performance reviews are presented as the first proof point for Windmill’s broader context graph. The underlying system is meant to capture the evidence and context behind work so managers, HR leaders, and employees can make better-informed decisions.
The context graph is accessible through Windy, Windmill’s AI agent, as well as the Windmill web app, full MCP support, and API support. The goal is to make important people-related context available wherever a company needs it.
Investor Confidence in a People-First Future
The $12 million fundraise was led by Inspired Capital, with participation from Primary Venture Partners, Founder Collective, and Oceans Ventures. Windmill says it has grown to more than 100 customers, including Kalshi, Rho, and Merge, since launching its performance reviews product in November 2025.
Alexa von Tobel, Managing Partner at Inspired Capital, framed Windmill’s opportunity around the idea that the strongest organizations of the next decade will not simply be the ones that reduce headcount, but the ones that use AI to continuously support and develop their workforces.
With its new funding, Windmill is positioning itself as infrastructure for companies that want to understand and develop their people more effectively in the AI era. By building a cited, continuously updated context graph, the company aims to help HR lead more strategically, give managers clearer visibility into their teams, and ensure employees’ work can be better recognized.