The financing accelerates product velocity, deeper integrations, and enterprise-grade security as brokerages adopt AI across quoting, renewal, and service.
Palo Alto, California — Circle today announced a $1.875 million pre-seed round led by Unusual Ventures. The funding enables Circle to expand its AI platform that picks up calls, sends emails, and fills portals while insurance producers close, delivering immediate, measurable value to insurance brokerages by reclaiming hours from each producer's day.
"Insurance brokers win on relationships and responsiveness. Every minute spent wrestling with email threads and carrier portals is a minute not spent with clients," said Isaiah Hall, Co-founder & CEO of Circle. "This raise lets us move even faster on the features brokers feel every day—real-time voice assistance, email orchestration, and portal automation—so submissions go out faster and renewals run themselves."
"Our architecture is purpose-built for brokerage workflows," said JJ Hennessy, Co-founder & CTO. "By unifying phone, email, and computer-use automation in one engine, Circle achieves end-to-end outcomes that point tools can't. The new capital accelerates deeper integrations, performance, and enterprise-grade security."
How the Capital Will Be Used
- Product velocity: Ship capabilities that remove hours from submission prep, renewal outreach, and service work.
- Integrations: Deepen overlays across the phone, email, AMS, and carrier portals used by mid-sized U.S. commercial brokerages.
- Security & trust: Expand enterprise controls, auditability, and SOC 2 readiness.
- Go-to-market: Partner with brokerage leaders to prove ROI quickly and scale within teams.
Why Unusual Ventures
Unusual Ventures partners with founders at the earliest stages to build category-defining companies. Their conviction in broker-focused AI and hands-on company-building model align with Circle's mission to deliver end-to-end workflow coverage via a zero-friction overlay on existing tools.
The Road Ahead
With growing demand from mid-sized U.S. commercial brokerages and a clear path to expansion across adjacent verticals, Circle is positioned for durable growth as AI becomes foundational to broker operations.
About Circle
Circle is the AI automation platform for P&C insurance brokerages. A single insurance intelligence engine unifies real-time voice assistance, email orchestration, and computer-vision portal automation to deliver end-to-end outcomes across quoting, renewal, and service. Circle was founded by Isaiah Hall and JJ Hennessy, who immersed themselves in AI technology while studying together at Stanford before bringing their experience from Amazon, Microsoft, and Palantir to the insurance industry.
About Unusual Ventures
Unusual Ventures is a venture firm that leads pre-seed, seed, and Series A investments in enterprise software and AI startups. Learn more at unusual.vc.
Meet the Founders
We started Circle to help brokerage teams focus on clients, not computer work. Our experience spans enterprise AI, developer platforms, and brokerage operations. We are building an assistant that works alongside people in real time.
