AI-powered insurance startup Lemonade raises $120 Million to fund global expansion

The New York-based AI-powered insurance startup Lemonade Inc., announced a $120 million Series C funding round led by the SoftBank Group, with participation from existing investors. The startup plans to use the funds to accelerate its global expansion in 2018. Its last Series B funding round was back in December when the startup raised $34 million B round of funding led by General Catalyst with participation from GV (formerly Google Ventures), Thrive Capital and Tusk Ventures, as well as existing investors Aleph, Sequoia and XL Innovate.  To date, Lemonade’s total funding is $60 million.

“The insurance brands we know today came of age in the era of the horse-drawn carriage,” said Daniel Schreiber, CEO & Co-Founder, Lemonade. “But insurance is best when powered by AI and behavioral economics, which is why we believe that companies built from scratch, on a digital substrate and with a social mission, will enjoy a structural advantage for decades to come.”

Lemonade is a licensed insurance carrier that offershomeowners and renters insurance powered by artificial intelligence and behavioral economics. By replacing brokers and bureaucracy with bots and machine learning, Lemonade promises zero paperwork and instant everything. And as a Certified B-Corp, where underwriting profits go to nonprofits, Lemonade is remaking insurance as a social good, rather than a necessary evil. The company was founded in 2015 by Daniel Schreiber, Shai Wininger

In addition to digitizing the entire insurance process, Lemonade reduces costs and bureaucracy through giving. In a reversal of the traditional insurance model, Lemonade takes a flat fee and donates a portion of unclaimed premium dollars to nonprofits during its annual ‘Giveback’. In its first year in market, Lemonade gave back over 10% of its revenues, set a world record when it paid a claim in 3 seconds, launched insurance as an API, and used AI to offer the first insurance policies with ‘Zero Everything’: zero deductible, zero rate hikes, zero depreciation.

“SoftBank is an ideal partner for us and we are thrilled to have them on board,” said Shai Wininger, President & Co-Founder, Lemonade. “We share SoftBank’s conviction that big data and machine learning are set to profoundly remake our entire industry, and SoftBank has the vision and means to enable this common vision to become a reality.”