Ema Lands $77M Amid AI's Growing Impact on Enterprise Software and Services

The agentic AI startup's Series B more than quadruples its valuation as it positions "AI employees" as a replacement for traditional SaaS and IT services spend

Ema, a startup deploying teams of AI agents to automate corporate processes across HR, IT, and finance, has raised $77 million in Series B funding led by Bengaluru-based venture firm Creaegis. The round brings Ema's total funding to $140 million and more than quadruples its valuation from its last round in 2024. Existing investors Accel, Section 32, and Prosus all increased their stakes. The round consisted entirely of primary equity, with no debt or secondary transactions .

What Ema Does

Founded in 2023 by former Google and Coinbase executive Surojit Chatterjee and ex-Okta executive Souvik Sen, Ema builds what it calls "AI employees" — systems that coordinate multiple AI agents to carry out multi-step business processes across a company's existing applications, rather than handling a single task at a time .

The platform integrates with more than 250 business applications and systems of record. Its AI employees can plan and execute workflows, check their own work, route approvals when required, and complete processes end to end, with human oversight for critical decisions .

The "Replace SaaS" Thesis

Chatterjee sees the model eventually reducing companies' reliance on traditional software products, including those sold as SaaS. Ema first "wraps" around an enterprise's existing applications, he said, before customers can reduce their dependence on some of those products and, in some cases, replace them altogether .

"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 told TechCrunch .

Targeting IT Services Work

The startup is also positioning itself to capture spend traditionally directed toward IT services firms. Chatterjee said AI can take over some of the implementation, integration, and consulting work that companies have historically paid services providers to perform around enterprise software .

"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" .

Traction and Metrics

Ema reports significant commercial momentum:

- Revenue has grown 50-fold over the past 24 months

- Revenue bookings have surpassed $150 million, representing total value of multiyear contracts rather than annual recurring revenue

- More than 50 active enterprise deals and over 1 million active enterprise users

- Net dollar retention rate of approximately 180%

- More than 90% of customers have expanded beyond their initial use case

- Gross margins close to 80%

Customers include NTT DATA, Hitachi, ADP, PwC, Google, KPMG, Wipro, and Microsoft .

Deployment Examples

The company has shared specific deployment outcomes:

- At a top 5 global systems integrator, Ema powers an employee assistant supporting more than 240,000 associates across 65 countries, automating over 100 workflows and handling approximately 2.9 million employee queries annually. The deployment reduced response times from days to seconds and avoided approximately 60% of tickets entirely .

- At a top 5 global BPO, Ema's agents handle more than 1 million IT service management tickets and over 1 million calls across more than 15 languages, achieving up to 95% accuracy with fewer than 10% of interactions escalated to humans .

- At a $50 billion global conglomerate, Ema moved from concept to production in four weeks, integrating with more than 20 systems of record and serving over 40,000 employees, achieving a 70% efficiency gain .

Pricing Model

Ema does not charge customers based on software seats or AI tokens consumed. Instead, its pricing is tied to completion of tasks and business outcomes . This model challenges the per-seat SaaS pricing that has long dominated enterprise software .

What the Funding Is For

Much of the new capital will go toward expanding Ema's go-to-market operations, particularly sales and marketing. The Mountain View-headquartered startup has grown to nearly 200 employees and has offices in Bengaluru, London, and Vancouver. It plans to expand into new regions including Asia-Pacific, South America, and parts of the Middle East over the next year .

Context and Caveats

The funding comes as AI increasingly competes for dollars businesses have traditionally spent on enterprise software and IT services. Major AI labs including Anthropic and OpenAI have also pushed deeper into the enterprise market where Ema operates, though Chatterjee does not see them as direct competitors. Ema's software draws on more than 150 models, including frontier and open source models, while the startup focuses on domain knowledge, integrations, and orchestration .

However, several of Ema's reported metrics are company-sourced and have not been independently audited. The $150 million in bookings represents total contract value of multi-year deals rather than annual recurring revenue, and Chatterjee declined to disclose the company's current ARR. The "replace SaaS" claim remains Chatterjee's positioning rather than an independently validated market trend .

The larger test for Ema will be whether its coordinated agents can remain dependable across complex enterprise environments where controls, integration, and exception handling dictate whether projects scale beyond early adopters.