Koch Disruptive Technologies has made a strategic investment in Emanate, a San Francisco-based start-up developing software to automate industrial sales and account management.
The value of the investment has not been disclosed. Emanate said the partnership would extend to companies owned by Koch, although neither side identified a business currently using its technology.
Koch is the second-largest private company in the US, with operations spanning refineries, factories, agricultural supply chains, software and logistics. It says it generates more than $125 billion (£94 billion) in annual revenue and employs about 120,000 people across more than 50 countries.
Jon Chisholm, managing director at Koch Disruptive Technologies, said: “While much of the conversation around AI has centred on efficiency and cost reduction, we believe some of the biggest opportunities lie in helping companies accelerate growth.”
Emanate’s industrial sales engine
Emanate’s software is designed to work on top of systems already used by industrial suppliers, bringing together information that is often spread across different parts of a business.
Founder and chief executive Kiara Nirghin said the platform could manage customer accounts continuously rather than leaving them to individual representatives, whose knowledge and available time may vary.
“Before Emanate, customer accounts were handled per account, by whoever owned them, with whatever that person remembered and had time for,” Nirghin said. “Now they’re handled 24/7, with a full knowledge graph of every single interaction on the account.”
The company describes its product as an engine rather than a chatbot or an agent. “You point it at a business metric, and the engine figures out the rest,” Nirghin said.
Emanate says the system can reactivate, manage, price and expand accounts autonomously. It begins, however, with a human overseeing its work and is given greater independence only after demonstrating results.
“Our model is earned autonomy,” Nirghin said. “The engine starts with a human in the loop and earns the right to act on its own, step by step, as it proves itself on an outcome.”
The company has not named its customers, citing confidentiality agreements, and has not released revenue or margin figures for them. It said in February that its software could increase customer revenue by between 60% and 80%.
Nirghin said Emanate tests its results by assigning the engine to one group of accounts and comparing performance with the rest of a customer’s business over the same period. The groups face the same prices and demand, allowing the company to attribute any difference to the software, she said.
Emanate emerged from stealth in February with backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Nirghin founded the company in 2025 and is a Thiel fellow, a former Google Science Fair grand prize winner and the youngest board member of the Google Impact Fund.
Asked about the worst mistake made by Emanate’s engine, Nirghin said there had not been one. “Because autonomy is earned and we deploy incredibly intelligently, it has never happened,” she said.
