Magentic, a London-based startup that builds AI agents for procurement, announced on 17 September 2026 that it had raised $18m in a Series A round.
Felicis led the round. Existing investors Sequoia Capital and The Westly Group also took part. The company did not disclose a valuation.
The round came about a year after Magentic launched. According to The Next Web, the company raised a $5.5m seed round led by Sequoia Capital in July 2025.
“The physical world is dealing with the biggest capex cycle in history, driven by AI demand”Robin Van Aeken, CEO and co-founder, Magentic
What Magentic does
Magentic sells what it calls digital workers: systems of several AI agents that handle procurement tasks for large manufacturers. The agents work inside a company's own software and communicate with staff through Microsoft Teams and email.
They cover work from supplier selection and contract negotiation to placing orders and clearing invoices, for both indirect purchases and direct spending on raw materials. The Next Web reported that people still approve major decisions.
According to Pulse 2, the software is built for industrial businesses with very large datasets, big procurement budgets and fragmented older systems. It runs with zero-data-retention arrangements with major AI providers, can be deployed across several clouds, and can be isolated within specific data regions.
Magentic says its customers include Global 500 companies and three of the world's ten largest beverage makers, though it did not name them. It says one customer runs more than a million orders a year through its agents and another has found $4m in savings. The company reports typical savings of 2% to 5% and a 60% improvement in data quality. These figures come from the company and were not independently verified.
The founders
Magentic was co-founded by chief executive Robin Van Aeken and chief technology officer Odhran O'Donoghue. According to The Next Web, Van Aeken is a former McKinsey consultant who worked with global manufacturers, and O'Donoghue holds a PhD in machine learning from Oxford and worked on AI projects at OpenAI. The company has offices in London and New York.
Van Aeken tied the round to heavy spending on physical infrastructure. "The physical world is dealing with the biggest capex cycle in history, driven by AI demand," he said in the announcement.
Feyza Haskaraman, a partner at Felicis, described supply chains as the least glamorous part of the economy but the most consequential. She added that getting an agent to understand a manufacturer's complex systems well enough to act inside them was no small feat, according to Pulse 2.
What the money is for
Magentic said it would use the funds to speed up its agent roadmap and extend its software to more procurement and supply chain workflows.
It also plans to put more into research on AI that can work on long, complex tasks such as industrial procurement and supply chain optimisation. O'Donoghue said the company was building AI that can diagnose problems, plan fixes, act on them and see the work through.
The company also says its deployments cut tens of thousands of hours of manual work for customers. It did not disclose its headcount or total funding. Based on the seed round reported by The Next Web, Magentic has raised at least $23.5m since it launched.
Company website: magentic.com