Pablo Palafox likes to say his company is “getting started” even as its valuation just crossed ten figures.
HappyRobot, the startup that builds AI agents to run the phone calls, emails, and scheduling that keep supply chains moving, just raised a $150 million Series C at a $1.2 billion valuation, Fortune learned exclusively. Prysm Capital and Eurazeo co-led the round, with participation from Bankinter, Kfund, Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), Orange, and T Capital (Deutsche Telekom).
The round comes less than a year after HappyRobot’s $44 million Series B, which itself followed a $15.6 million Series A led by a16z in December 2024. Revenue has grown more than 5x since that Series B, and net dollar retention has topped 150%, Palafox told me. One large U.S. supply chain customer, he said, expanded its contract 10x in a single year and others grew their commitments by up to 5X.
HappyRobot’s pitch is simple: instead of chatbots that draft suggestions for humans, its AI agents actually do the work, negotiating with truck drivers, scheduling appointments, and handling customer support end to end. The company started in logistics—where it now counts DHL, Uber, Kuehne + Nagel, Naturgy, and Repsol among its 150-plus enterprise customers—and is pushing into telecom, energy, utilities, airlines, and financial services. It’s chasing a fast-growing pool of money: the broader enterprise AI agents category is expected to balloon toward $295 billion by 2035.
Palafox, who did his PhD in computer vision and worked on autonomous systems at Meta’s Reality Labs before founding HappyRobot, said his research background mattered less than expected. “The truth is a lot more messy,” he explained, describing how the real unlock came from sitting next to customers’ own operators to see how the work actually got done.
He met cofounder Luis Paarup on their second day of college in Spain in 2012. The two, along with Palafox’s brother Javi, still split responsibilities almost exactly as they did at founding: Paarup runs product and engineering, Javi handles operations and the early sales motion, and Pablo does deployments and customer-facing work, a role he says suits him after years of theater and piano growing up.
a16z general partner Anish Acharya, who has sat on HappyRobot’s board since the Series A, said the company built its way into a horizontal platform by first solving a brutally hard problem: getting AI to negotiate freight prices without hallucinating. “If the model once in a while hallucinates the price of a million dollars, that could be a big problem,” he said.
New investor Kerry Wei of Prysm Capital, who led the growth-equity firm’s check, said what convinced her was unanimous customer feedback and a founding team she considers refreshingly unpretentious. “They’re not trying to be a cool AI startup,” she told me.
See you tomorrow,
Lily Mae LazarusX: @LilyMaeLazarusEmail: lily.lazarus@fortune.comSubmit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.
Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
VENTURE DEALS
– Base Power, an Austin, Texas-based energy company, raised $1 billion in Series D funding. Ribbit, Addition, Valor Equity Partners, and JPMorganChase’s Strategic Investment Group led the round.
– Zenity, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based AI security and governance platform, raised $125 million in Series C funding. Norwest led the round and was joined by Qumra Capital, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and others.
– Vivid Dx, an Oxford, U.K.-based developer of rapid blood tests for infectious diseases and antibiotic resistance, raised $15 million in seed funding. Oxford Science Enterprises and Cedars-Sinai Intellectual Property led the round and were joined by Jameel Investment Management Company and others.
PRIVATE EQUITY
– KKR agreed to acquire Integer Holdings, a Plano, Texas-based medical device contract development and manufacturing organization, for approximately $5.7 billion.
– COEO Solutions, a portfolio group of Riata Capital Group, acquired NetWolves Network Services, a Tampa, Fla.-based enterprise IT company. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– McNally Capital acquired a majority stake in TENICA, a Chantilly, Va.-based engineering, cybersecurity, and mission-operations contractor serving space, intelligence, and defense customers. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– THL Partners acquired a majority stake in PaveMasters, a Poway, Calif.-based family of pavement maintenance companies. Financial terms were not disclosed.
IPOs
– Latigo Biotherapeutics, a Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based biopharmaceutical company developing non-opioid pain medicines, plans to raise $272 million in an offering of 16 million shares priced between $16 and $18 on the Nasdaq. Westlake BioPartners, Foresite Capital, 5AM Ventures, and Blue Owl Healthcare back the company.
FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS
– KKR, a New York City-based private equity firm, raised $19.2 billion for its Core+ fund focused on infrastructure assets and businesses.
– Kingswood Capital Management, a Los Angeles, Calif.-based investment firm, raised $4 billion across two funds focused on companies in the aerospace & defense, automotive aftermarket, consumer, distribution, food and beverage, healthcare, industrials, and services industries.
– Index Ventures, a London, U.K.-based venture capital firm, raised $3.5 billion across seed, venture, and growth funds focused on technology investments.
– MetLife Investment Management, a New York City-based asset manager, raised $1.2 billion for its third Private Equity Partners Fund.
PEOPLE
– Felicis, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture capital firm, hired Graham Littlehale as a partner. Previously, he was with Point72 Ventures.
– Left Lane Capital, a New York City and London, U.K.-based venture capital firm, promoted Arjun Kapur and Paddy Dillon to principal.
– Lightspeed Venture Partners, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture capital firm, hired Alex LaPolice as a partner. Previously, he was with Summit Partners.
The July 31 edition of Term Sheet incorrectly stated that Kingswood Capital Management raised $3.1 billion across its two funds. The amount raised was instead $4 billion across its two funds ($3.1 billion for Fund IV, and $900 million for Small Cap Fund I).
