The Pulse
Serval Raises $150 Million at $3 Billion Valuation to Take On ServiceNow
Serval announced a $150 million Series C led by Sequoia at a $3 billion valuation. The enterprise software startup plans to expand its AI workflow product and hire more than 500 people as it targets ServiceNow replacements.
AI.info Team · Written with AI · fact-checked ·
Serval raised $150 million at a $3 billion valuation on October 29, 2026, betting that companies will replace enterprise workflow software with systems built around AI-generated automations. Sequoia led the Series C, Serval’s third funding round in 12 months. Elad Gil, Evantic, First Round, General Catalyst and Redpoint also participated, alongside new investors Conviction and Headline.
Serval wants employees to build workflows in code
The San Francisco company’s pitch centers on Catalyst, its automation agent. Employees describe a business process, and the system turns the requirements into code-based tools that run under controls set by administrators. Serval says workers in IT, security, human resources, finance and legal can build and run these workflows without engineering experience.
Jake Stauch, Serval’s co-founder and chief executive, and Alex McLeod, its co-founder and chief technology officer, describe the goal as giving workers outside engineering the same ability to build that AI coding tools have given software teams. “The mission is simple: make work more fun and more fulfilling, by giving the same building power that engineers have to everyone inside the biggest, messiest enterprises in the world,” they write. Jake Stauch and Alex McLeod, Serval co-founders
Catalyst sits inside Serval’s enterprise service-management platform, which also tracks employee requests, manages assets and handles approvals and changes. The company argues that combining those functions with workflow automation can let customers replace an existing system of record rather than add another AI product on top of it. Serval is positioning the product against ServiceNow in particular, while acknowledging that enterprise systems such as Workday, Salesforce and SAP remain deeply embedded.
A 45-day replacement is Serval’s proof point
Serval says one automotive manufacturer replaced ServiceNow across its company in 45 days. The migration covered IT service management, the configuration management database, hardware and software asset management, and workflows used by other departments. The company does not name the manufacturer in its announcement.
The startup also says its annual recurring revenue has doubled every quarter since its Series B, and that two Fortune 20 companies onboarded in the six months before the announcement. It names Fox Corporation, WPP, Live Nation and Ramp as companies now building with Serval. The post gives no revenue figure, so the growth claim cannot be assessed against a disclosed starting point or dollar amount.
$150 million backs a 500-person hiring plan
Serval plans to hire more than 500 people over the next 12 months. More than 100 hires will join ProServal, a new professional-services arm whose automation engineers will work with enterprise teams to identify processes for redesign and automate them with the company’s tools. Serval says roughly half of those engineers will be recent college graduates who complete a four-week training program.
The plan puts people, not only software development, at the center of Serval’s expansion. ProServal staff will help customers map how work gets done and build automations around those processes. The announcement does not break down how the new funding will be divided among hiring, product development and other expenses.
The test is whether customers keep replacing incumbents
Serval’s case rests on a difficult enterprise sale: persuading customers to move core records, requests and approval processes off established platforms. Its 45-day migration example suggests the company can complete a broad switch at one manufacturer, while the two Fortune 20 additions point to interest from larger buyers. The announcement does not say whether either of those companies plans to replace its incumbent system.
For now, the clearest measure of Serval’s ambition is the migration it describes: one unnamed automaker, a company-wide transition from ServiceNow, and 45 days to complete it. Whether Serval can repeat that replacement at its newer Fortune 20 customers remains the concrete question behind its $3 billion valuation.