Koch's Venture Arm Bets on Emanate's AI for Industrial Sales

Koch Disruptive Technologies, the venture arm of Koch, Inc., has made a strategic investment in Emanate, the San Francisco startup that wants AI to run industrial sales. Emanate confirmed the deal exclusively, but neither side disclosed the amount. Koch is private, and Emanate said it doesn't disclose investment sizes.

The backer carries weight. Koch, Inc. is the second-largest private company in the U.S., running refineries, factories, farm-to-market supply chains, software and logistics. The company said it generates more than $125 billion in annual revenue and employs roughly 120,000 people across more than 50 countries.

The strategic logic, per Koch, is growth rather than cost-cutting. "While much of the conversation around AI has centered on efficiency and cost reduction, we believe some of the biggest opportunities lie in helping companies accelerate growth," Jon Chisholm, managing director at Koch Disruptive Technologies, said in a statement. Emanate said the collaboration extends to "Koch Inc. owned companies," but it wouldn't name one using the technology.

Who is Emanate?

The startup came out of stealth in February with backing from a16z, Peter Thiel and Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian. Founder and CEO Kiara Nirghin is a Thiel fellow, a former Grand Prize winner of the Google Science Fair and the youngest board member of the Google Impact Fund. She founded Emanate in 2025.

What does the product actually do?

Emanate's bet is simple: speed wins. An industrial buyer can usually get the same part from the next supplier, so whoever answers first, with a sharper read on price, takes the order. The company says its software sits on top of the systems suppliers already use and pulls that scattered knowledge into one place.

"Before Emanate, customer accounts were handled per account, by whoever owned them, with whatever that person remembered and had time for," Nirghin said in written responses. "Now they're handled 24/7, with a full knowledge graph of every single interaction on the account."

She doesn't call the product a chatbot or an agent. She calls it an engine. "You point it at a business metric, and the engine figures out the rest."

The engine can autonomously reactivate, manage, price and expand accounts, Nirghin said — but not from day one. "Our model is earned autonomy," she said. "The engine starts with a human in the loop and earns the right to act on its own, step by step, as it proves itself on an outcome."

How does Emanate prove results?

Nirghin said the company measures results by running a controlled comparison: give the engine to one group of accounts, then measure it against the rest of the customer's business over the same period. Both groups face the same prices and demand, so the gap should reflect the engine's effect. In February, the company said its product could lift customer revenue by 60% to 80%.

Emanate wouldn't name any customer, citing confidentiality agreements, and it didn't share revenue or margin figures for any customer.

Asked about the worst mistake the engine has made, Nirghin said there hasn't been one. "Because autonomy is earned and we deploy incredibly intelligently, it has never happened," she said.

For now, the proof sits inside customer accounts that nobody will name. If Koch's own operating companies deploy the engine and the account-level numbers hold, Emanate will have its most credible case yet that industrial sales — long run on spec sheets and 20-year rep relationships — can run on software instead.