OpenAI backs Poetic to automate underwriting and compliance
June 10, 2026 — Poetic emerged from stealth with 500M valuation to automate finance’s most sensitive back-office work: insurance underwriting, compliance, and fraud checks.
Investors
Kleiner Perkins led the Series A. Participants include OpenAI, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, and First Harmonic.
Founder story
Markie Wagner founded Poetic after watching AI systems fail in production at Google and Waymo. The core insight: autonomous LLM agents are not reliable enough for workflows where 5% error rates are unacceptable.
Product differentiation
Rather than free-form agent reasoning, Poetic built a proprietary language that converts natural-language workflow descriptions into deterministic, near-tokenless code execution — controllable, auditable, and repeatable at scale.
Named customers
SoFi and AIG are cited as enterprise customers. SoFi achieved 99%+ quality on fraud investigations in five weeks. The company claims 100% pilot-to-production conversion.
Efficiency narrative
Four employees and an eight-figure 2025 run rate highlight extreme product leverage — though metrics are company-reported and should be attributed accordingly.