Serval raises $150m at $3bn valuation to replace ServiceNow with AI agents

Serval co-founders Jake Stauch (left), chief executive, and Alex McLeod, chief technology officer

Serval has raised $150m in a Series C round led by Sequoia, valuing the San Francisco company at $3bn. That is three times the $1bn valuation it reached in December, when it raised $75m.

Serval announced the round on Thursday in a blog post and a press release. Co-founder and chief executive Jake Stauch spoke to Harshita Mary Varghese of Reuters about the product.

“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 makes AI agents that automate employee support work. It started with IT tasks such as managing staff access, troubleshooting, and keeping track of software and hardware. The company says customers now also use it in HR, finance, security and legal teams.

Its automation agent, Catalyst, lets staff with no engineering background build workflows in code. Serval says the agent turns business requirements into fixed tools, with guardrails, permission checks and approvals managed by administrators.

Stauch told Reuters that the agent administrators use to build tools is kept separate from the one employees use. He said customers still generally want a human to approve sensitive actions, such as password resets and application access.

Serval says its annual recurring revenue has doubled every quarter since its Series B. Two Fortune 20 companies became customers in the past six months, according to its founders. Other customers include Fox Corporation, WPP, Live Nation and Ramp, and most go live within 30 days, the company says.

The company says one car maker moved its whole organisation from ServiceNow to Serval in 45 days. Stauch told Reuters it was Lucid Motors. He told Rashi Shrivastava of Forbes that the 10,000-person company did “a full rip and replace”.

ServiceNow told Forbes that it keeps a 98% renewal rate. It said inbound interest from first-time customers is up 60%. Its shares fell as much as 25% on Thursday, their biggest intraday drop since it listed in 2012, after its bookings outlook missed forecasts.

Stauch and chief technology officer Alex McLeod also mentioned the talk of a “SaaSpocalypse”. They wrote that Workday, Salesforce and SAP remain deeply embedded in large companies. Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff dismissed the SaaSpocalypse as “crazy nonsense” in September.

Sequoia led the Serval Series C, the company’s third round in 12 months. Existing investors Elad Gil, Evantic, First Round, General Catalyst and Redpoint took part. Conviction and Headline joined as new investors. Serval has now raised $277m in total.

“Serval is winning over major enterprises, becoming their system of record, and taking on their most critical workflows,” Sequoia partner Anas Biad said in the press release.

Serval plans to hire more than 500 people over the next 12 months. It is opening offices in New York, London and Austin. The company says its team has grown tenfold in the past year.

More than 100 of the new hires will be automation engineers in ProServal, a new professional services arm. They will work inside customers’ teams to find tasks to automate and redesign processes. About half will be recent graduates, trained in a four-week Serval programme.

“Nobody has ten years of experience doing this, because two years ago the tools didn’t exist,” Stauch said in the press release.

Cristian Dina is the CRO at The Next Web. He has interviewed 300+ industry leaders and authored the book King of Networking, establishing hi (show all) Cristian Dina is the CRO at The Next Web. He has interviewed 300+ industry leaders and authored the book King of Networking, establishing himself as one of the most connected and respected voices in the ecosystem. At just 23 years old, Cristian was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 2025 list, representing a new generation of tech builders, bold thinkers who move fast, build with purpose, and create real impact.

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