Polygrade, a Toronto-based provider of AI-driven claims management software for the warranty sector, has come out of stealth with $6.3m from Construct Capital, American Family Ventures and Nine Four Ventures.
The company is targeting the operational costs associated with warranty claims through a platform designed to carry out claims work rather than simply record and track it.
Its technology covers five stages of the claims lifecycle: first notice of loss, pre-dispatch triage, authorisation, parts procurement and payment. Specialised agents operate within thresholds set by individual warranty providers, with cases outside those limits passed to human reviewers.
Polygrade’s platform is designed to sit above a warranty provider’s existing technology rather than replace it. It uses data from those systems to trigger actions and is building a proprietary intelligence graph linking policies, claims, decisions and outcomes.
According to Polygrade, early deployments have identified unnecessary service visits, repairs with a low likelihood of resolving the underlying fault and excessive spending on parts. The company says its technology can reduce claim severity and operating costs, shorten repair cycles and speed up contractor authorisation and payment.
Fidelity National Home Warranty is running the platform in production, while Cinch Home Services uses it for appliance dispatch triage and parts sourcing. Polygrade’s supplier partners include Encompass, UED, Sibi and Marcone.
The company’s roadmap extends beyond home warranty into extended warranty, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) warranty and equipment breakdown insurance. Polygrade said these are areas where a claim typically ends with a physical repair or replacement.
The $6.3m will be used to scale Polygrade’s Forward Deployed Engineering, go-to-market and partner enablement functions.
Polygrade was founded in 2025 and operates from Toronto, St. George, Utah and Austin, Texas, serving clients across the US. CEO David Steckel founded Setter, a Sequoia-backed home management platform later acquired by Thumbtack, and subsequently served as chief product officer at Sears Home Services.
CTO Eui Chung spent close to three decades at Sears and Transformco, where he led the AI transformation of Sears Home Services. Head of product Kaustubh Vongole previously directed fulfilment products and AI strategy.
Polygrade founder and CEO David Steckel said, “Warranty is a massive industry that never really got its modern software moment. The technology that exists is largely designed to keep track of a claim and move it through a workflow. We built Polygrade to understand the claim and act on it. If AI can help determine what’s wrong before a contractor gets in a truck, find the right part at the right price, make an authorisation decision and get a contractor paid faster, the economics of the entire claim change.”
Fidelity National Home Warranty EVP and COO Jason Manns said, “We hold new technology to a simple standard: it has to improve the customer’s claim experience right away and lower costs. Polygrade accomplished both of those goals, while not requiring a wholesale replacement of the systems warranty companies depend on. We take our time, and we validate pilots before we scale. Polygrade stood out for bringing practical AI into our existing workflows, from smarter claims intake to parts procurement.”
Cinch Home Services vice president, service network operations Sandy Camera said, “The value has been tangible, and the pace has been impressive. We have streamlined processes, improved efficiency, and solved real operational problems on the parts side.”
Construct Capital cofounder and managing partner Rachel Holt said, “David, Eui and Kaustubh have an unusual combination of deep domain expertise and technical experience. They’ve run these operations at scale and understand why applying AI to a complex enterprise workflow requires much more than building a model. Polygrade has the potential to become the intelligence and execution layer for a massive category that has been largely overlooked by modern software.”
Encompass president and CEO Robert Coolidge said, “Encompass is excited about its partnership with Polygrade. Encompass has long been a leading supplier of OEM replacement parts to the warranty industry, and this partnership strengthens our commitment to helping warranty providers improve parts availability, access more competitive pricing, and deliver the industry’s highest service levels.”
Steckel added, “There are enormous categories where a claim ends with something physical needing to be repaired or replaced. We think the infrastructure for managing those claims is going to look very different in an AI-native world.”
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