Novella is a wholesale insurance brokerage that pairs human producers with AI agents to handle the back-office work that typically slows down specialty placements. The product is aimed at retail agents sending in submissions and at wholesale brokers who want to spend more time on relationships and less on paperwork. AI agents handle placement, binding, form comparison, policy review, subjectivity collection, inspections, billing, endorsements, renewals, and more , with an initial focus on middle-market commercial property, general liability and excess casualty business .
The launch marks a $21 million capital raise, including a recently closed $16 million Series A led by Brewer Lane Ventures, with participation from Box Group, Crystal Venture Partners, SV Angel, Avid Ventures, Verissimo Ventures , Blank Ventures, and global insurer Arch. The capital will fund broker recruiting and continued development of the platform as Novella scales nationally. The company is licensed in all 50 US states and has been appointed by close to 100 specialty carriers and MGAs to broker P&C insurance .
Novella was co-founded in 2024 by CEO Max Kane, who previously worked in product at Lemonade, CTO Michael Tsibelman, a former senior engineer at Microsoft, and head of brokerage Alex Broome, who previously built a real estate insurance brokerage . The bet underneath the launch is that vertical AI tuned to E&S workflows can let a single producer carry a larger book without losing the relationship work that wins accounts, a thesis worth watching as more services businesses test whether AI agents can compress the cost of complex, judgment-heavy work.
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Priya RamanMay 14, 2026
"A Wholesaler Built for You" reads like a B2B brochure from 2008. Try "The wholesaler that actually picks up the phone" and bill me later.
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Tobias OkaforMay 14, 2026
Insurance wholesaling is one of those words I have heard 400 times and still could not define under oath. The video did not help but I respect the confidence.
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Marco SalvatoreMay 14, 2026
Brokers asking "how will AI impact my job" and the answer being "we built a company around you" is a beautiful piece of diplomatic phrasing.
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Linh VuMay 14, 2026
That cold open had no hook, you waited 11 seconds before saying what Novella does. Cut the establishing shots, lead with the broker pain, thank me in the seed extension.
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Devika ShahMay 14, 2026
Curious what the take rate looks like on a wholesale model wrapped in software. Is this SaaS pricing, commission split, or the dreaded "hybrid"?
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Yusra KibetMay 14, 2026
How many people shipped this? Insuretech usually means 80 engineers and a compliance floor, would love to know if Novella is actually lean.
C
Connor HalloranMay 14, 2026
We had a wholesaler-broker matching tool internally back in the day and the hard part was never the matching, it was the carrier appetite data going stale in 48 hours. Curious how Novella keeps it fresh.
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Rohan MehtaMay 14, 2026
This might be the last broker tool launched before everyone realizes the broker is the agent. Two years from now Novella is selling to the agents, not the humans.
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Novella is a wholesale insurance brokerage that pairs human producers with AI agents to handle the back-office work that typically slows down specialty placements. The product is aimed at retail agents sending in submissions and at wholesale brokers who want to spend more time on relationships and less on paperwork. AI agents handle placement, binding, form comparison, policy review, subjectivity collection, inspections, billing, endorsements, renewals, and more , with an initial focus on middle-market commercial property, general liability and excess casualty business . The launch marks a $21 million capital raise, including a recently closed $16 million Series A led by Brewer Lane Ventures, with participation from Box Group, Crystal Venture Partners, SV Angel, Avid Ventures, Verissimo Ventures , Blank Ventures, and global insurer Arch. The capital will fund broker recruiting and continued development of the platform as Novella scales nationally. The company is licensed in all 50 US states and has been appointed by close to 100 specialty carriers and MGAs to broker P&C insurance . Novella was co-founded in 2024 by CEO Max Kane, who previously worked in product at Lemonade, CTO Michael Tsibelman, a former senior engineer at Microsoft, and head of brokerage Alex Broome, who previously built a real estate insurance brokerage . The bet underneath the launch is that vertical AI tuned to E&S workflows can let a single producer carry a larger book without losing the relationship work that wins accounts, a thesis worth watching as more services businesses test whether AI agents can compress the cost of complex, judgment-heavy work.
Comments (8)
"A Wholesaler Built for You" reads like a B2B brochure from 2008. Try "The wholesaler that actually picks up the phone" and bill me later.
Insurance wholesaling is one of those words I have heard 400 times and still could not define under oath. The video did not help but I respect the confidence.
Brokers asking "how will AI impact my job" and the answer being "we built a company around you" is a beautiful piece of diplomatic phrasing.
That cold open had no hook, you waited 11 seconds before saying what Novella does. Cut the establishing shots, lead with the broker pain, thank me in the seed extension.
Curious what the take rate looks like on a wholesale model wrapped in software. Is this SaaS pricing, commission split, or the dreaded "hybrid"?
How many people shipped this? Insuretech usually means 80 engineers and a compliance floor, would love to know if Novella is actually lean.
We had a wholesaler-broker matching tool internally back in the day and the hard part was never the matching, it was the carrier appetite data going stale in 48 hours. Curious how Novella keeps it fresh.
This might be the last broker tool launched before everyone realizes the broker is the agent. Two years from now Novella is selling to the agents, not the humans.