- The corporate that created the ChatGPT insurance coverage app, which led to a 9% drop in dealer shares, has raised $8 million in seed funding led by Seedcamp.
- Waniwani builds know-how that lets monetary providers firms promote instantly via AI platforms. Its system powered the occasion that affected Willis Towers Watson, Aon, and Arthur J. Gallagher on February 9.
- This funding comes after Financial institution of America warned that $15 billion in insurance coverage dealer income is now in danger due to AI-driven distribution.
On February 9, Willis Towers Watson fell 13% in a single day, its worst decline since 2008, whereas Aon and Arthur J. Gallagher dropped 8% to 11%. In Europe, the STOXX 600 insurance index fell 1.3%, affecting Hiscox, Aviva, and AXA.
The market noticed these adjustments as a severe menace to the dealer mannequin. Goldman Sachs later referred to as the 9% dealer sell-off overdone, and shares partly recovered over the following three weeks. However Bank of America disagreed. In a March be aware, its analysts mentioned $15 billion in dealer income is in danger from AI-driven adjustments. The talk continues to be ongoing.
The drop was attributable to a ChatGPT-backed app, Tuio, that allow customers get house insurance coverage quotes throughout a dialog. Waniwani, a US startup, supplied the know-how behind this. In accordance with Robin Diligent, co-founder and chief government of Waniwani, this gave the corporate “an unfair head begin and visibility” within the race to turn out to be the primary platform for AI monetary distribution.
Right now, Waniwani has raised $8 million in seed funding led by Seedcamp, with help from Redstone, Zone II Ventures, Plug & Play, and a number of other angel buyers. The corporate’s complete funding to this point, together with the seed spherical and a pre-seed funding from Hexa, is roughly $8.7 million.
“Distribution is transferring to AI, and that shift is irreversible. We’re dedicated to giving each service vendor essentially the most superior and full open-source answer to construct their distribution on. However deploying the agent is simply the beginning,” says Diligent.
“The actual work begins after: distributors must drive site visitors to those brokers, dynamically optimise their full funnel to win prospects and maximise income, all whereas staying compliant with native laws. That’s the entire goal of our infrastructure,” he provides.
From a French insurtech exit to constructing a brand new infrastructure layer
Waniwani was based in early 2026 and relies in San Francisco, with places of work in New York and Paris. The corporate began at Hexa, a European enterprise studio previously referred to as eFounders, which has additionally backed Entrance, Aircall, and Spendesk.
Diligent beforehand led Boston Consulting Group’s Geneva workplace and was a key member of its generative AI group, engaged on massive AI tasks for giant shoppers. Co-founder and chairman Raphaël Vullierme additionally co-founded Luko, which grew to become France’s largest on-line house insurer earlier than Allianz Direct purchased it in January 2024 for €4.3 million.
Vullierme spent almost a decade main an insurer, observing brokers, comparability websites, and direct gross sales channels compete for client consideration. As AI platforms started to mixture this consideration at scale, he witnessed the distribution mannequin shift in actual time.
Co-founder and chief know-how officer Maxime Antoine beforehand led engineering at Cantina, constructing safety platforms for Coinbase, Uniswap, Mastercard, and UBS. Co-founder Luiza Gusmao was previously a vice chairman at Cowl Genius, a worldwide embedded insurance coverage platform.
The Shopify for providers strategy
Waniwani’s core product is an open-source software program improvement package that permits any quote-based providers vendor, together with insurance coverage, mortgages, house providers, and software program, to construct its personal gross sales agent and distribute it instantly inside AI platforms equivalent to ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s Gemini, in addition to via conversational channels like WhatsApp.
The corporate generates income via a paid infrastructure layer that features compliance and regulatory monitoring instruments, funnel simulation and efficiency analytics, pricing optimisation, and anti-scraping safety.
That is an deliberately acquainted mannequin. Stripe supplied free developer instruments and charged for fee processing, whereas Twilio supplied free communications APIs and charged for infrastructure. Waniwani anticipates that monetary providers distributors will observe the same path: beginning with free instruments and transitioning to a platform that manages regulated, high-stakes operations. The corporate describes itself as “Shopify, however for providers.”
Waniwani has achieved broad geographic traction for a corporation lower than a yr previous, with shoppers throughout Europe, Latin America, the Center East, South Korea, Australia, and its major US market. The corporate has established a strategic partnership with Deloitte UK to help monetary establishments in deploying Waniwani’s infrastructure.
Aviva and MONY Group, the guardian of MoneySuperMarket within the UK, have additionally introduced ChatGPT functions constructed on the platform. Waniwani stories it’s on monitor to generate a number of million {dollars} in income in its first yr.
The aggressive panorama continues to be evolving. Established insurance coverage know-how firms equivalent to Majesco, Guidewire, and Duck Creek Applied sciences haven’t particularly centered on AI channel distribution as Waniwani has.
A extra direct aggressive danger could come up from the AI platforms themselves. If OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google develop native monetisation options for monetary providers suppliers, Waniwani’s infrastructure layer might be bypassed.
Buyers supporting the AI distribution technique
Waniwani states that the capital will help the growth of its open-source SDK, the expansion of its paid infrastructure modules, and ongoing worldwide growth.
The broader query raised is whether or not February 9 was an remoted incident or the start of a structural shift in monetary providers distribution. Financial institution of America helps the latter view, whereas Goldman Sachs believes the market overreacted.
Waniwani is positioning its enterprise on the expectation that change is underway.
