We are pleased to announce that Updata Partners VIII has led a $75 million Series B investment in Kalepa, an AI underwriting platform for property and casualty insurers. Existing investors IA Ventures and Inspired Capital also participated in the round.
Legacy insurance underwriting workflows are under structural strain. Submission volume per underwriter has more than quadrupled over the past ten years as brokers have digitized their distribution. Underwriting capacity has not scaled in step, and claim severity has continued to rise. Most underwriters can review only a fraction of what reaches them, and the majority of carriers triage submissions out of shared inboxes and spreadsheets. Such process inefficiency results in risk being selected and priced on incomplete information, quality policies getting missed, and a widening gap between the volume a carrier sees and the volume it can profitably underwrite.
Kalepa exists to close that gap. Its AI-native software powers the underwriting decision from submission intake through policy bind, unifying ingestion, clearance, triage, risk analysis, rating, and binding into a single platform. AI agents read every document in a submission, score each risk on winnability and profitability against the carrier’s appetite and portfolio limits, and return a cited, auditable rationale the underwriter can stand behind. Kalepa integrates with existing policy administration systems, becoming the system of action underwriters work in every day. Today, Kalepa serves the full range of risk underwriters: major multinational carriers, high-growth carriers and MGAs, and regional member-owned mutuals.
Founded by CEO Paul Monasterio and COO Daniel Hillman, Kalepa has more than doubled year over year while remaining cash flow positive, with best-in-class retention and unit economics. We look forward to partnering with Kalepa as the team expands its market-leading solutions for insurers. Updata will be represented on the Company’s board by General Partner Jon Seeber.
The Company’s press release can be found here.