Serval, a San Francisco enterprise service management and automation startup, has raised a $150 million Series C led by Sequoia at a $3 billion valuation, the company said on October 29. In its funding post, Serval pitches its platform as a replacement for ServiceNow, not an add-on to it.
The round is Serval's third in just over a year, SiliconANGLE reported. Existing investors Elad Gil, Evantic, First Round, General Catalyst and Redpoint joined, and Conviction and Headline came in as new investors, according to the announcement. Serval says it has now raised $277 million in total.
The numbers
- Round: $150 million Series C, led by Sequoia.
- Valuation: $3 billion, triple the $1 billion valuation of its December 2025 round, Reuters reported.
- Earlier rounds: a $75 million Series B, also led by Sequoia, and a $47 million Series A led by Redpoint, SiliconANGLE reported.
- Revenue: Serval did not disclose its annual recurring revenue (ARR), SiliconANGLE noted. The company says its ARR has doubled every quarter since its Series B.
- Customers: two Fortune 20 companies onboarded in the last six months, plus Fox Corporation, WPP, Live Nation and Ramp, per the company.
The Series C is twice the size of the Series B ($150 million against $75 million), and the valuation is three times higher ($3 billion against $1 billion).
What Serval sells
Serval was founded in 2024 and started on the IT help desk, SiliconANGLE reported. Its platform covers the parts of a classic IT service management tool, such as ticket tracking, asset management, and change and approval workflows. On top of that, AI agents write the automations that handle employee requests.
The core product is Catalyst, which Serval calls its automation agent. In the funding post, the founders say Catalyst lets employees "across IT, Security, HR, Finance, Legal, and beyond" build and run code-based workflows "with no engineering experience required." Admins manage the guardrails, permission checks and approvals. Serval made Catalyst generally available in August, and we covered that Catalyst launch at the time.
"Serval gives all employees, beyond just engineers, a powerful code generation tool that allows them to automate their least fulfilling work," co-founder and CTO Alex McLeod said in the announcement.
On safety controls, CEO Jake Stauch told Reuters that Serval separates the agent admins use to build tools from the one employees use to run approved workflows. He said IT and security teams control permissions and approvals, and that customers still generally want a human to approve sensitive actions such as password resets, application access and changes to sensitive systems.
The ServiceNow pitch
Serval does not position itself as an AI add-on. "It's not an additional layer of AI spend on top of your existing system of record, it is a true alternative replacement for platforms like ServiceNow," Stauch told Reuters.
Serval says one automotive manufacturer replaced ServiceNow company wide in 45 days, covering IT service management, the configuration management database, and hardware and software asset management. Stauch told Reuters that electric vehicle maker Lucid Motors migrated from ServiceNow to Serval in 45 days.
Sequoia's link to the incumbent is part of the story. When it led the Series B in December 2025, the firm wrote that the last time it heard customer feedback this strong for an "IT system of record" thesis was 16 years earlier, "when we partnered with ServiceNow." This time, Sequoia partner Anas Biad said in the release that "Serval is winning over major enterprises, becoming their system of record, and taking on their most critical workflows."
ServiceNow reported third-quarter results on October 28, and its shares fell 18.7% to $122 in premarket trading on October 29, Yahoo Finance reported. Adjusted earnings of $1.00 per share missed the $1.02 consensus, and fourth-quarter revenue guidance of $4.25 billion to $4.26 billion came in below the $4.36 billion analysts expected. ServiceNow also raised its full-year AI annual contract value target to $1.7 billion. ServiceNow is adding AI of its own, including a ServiceNow plugin for ChatGPT built with OpenAI.
Where the money goes
Serval says it will hire more than 500 people in the next 12 months. More than 100 of them will be "Automation Engineers" in ProServal, a new professional services arm. They will work inside customer teams to find work to automate and redesign processes. Roughly half will be recent college graduates who go through a four-week Serval training program.
"Nobody has ten years of experience doing this, because two years ago the tools didn't exist," Stauch said in the release.
SiliconANGLE reported that Serval's headcount is 10 times what it was a year ago and that the company is opening offices in New York, London and Austin, alongside its San Francisco headquarters.
Why it matters
Reuters said the round highlights investor interest in AI startups taking on established enterprise software providers such as ServiceNow and Workday. Others are chasing the same requests: Zendesk's employee service AI agents also target IT and HR work.
Serval's plan has two parts: replace the system of record instead of adding an AI layer, and place its own engineers inside large customers to drive the change. The ARR growth and the 45-day migration are company claims. The things to watch are whether more large ServiceNow customers switch, and whether ProServal can hire and train more than 100 engineers in a year.
Sources
- Serval: We raised $150M to make everyone a builder
- Business Wire: Serval Raises $150M Series C at $3B Valuation Led by Sequoia
- Reuters via Investing.com: Serval triples valuation to $3 billion as businesses adopt AI workflow automation
- SiliconANGLE: Serval raises $150M at $3B valuation to bring its automation agents beyond IT
- SiliconANGLE: Serval raises $47M (Series A, October 2025)
- Sequoia: Partnering with Serval
- Serval: Announcing general availability of Catalyst
- Yahoo Finance: Why Is ServiceNow Stock Falling 18.7% in Premarket Trading?
