Atomicwork, a SaaS startup founded by Indian entrepreneurs, has raised $25 million in a fresh investment round backed by Khosla Ventures, as it plans to scale and deploy AI agents to simplify communication and service delivery between employees and their enterprises.

The IT service management market has long struggled to provide quick support and easy access to information for employees, with traditional solutions requiring time and specialized resources to deploy. However, the emergence of AI has brought some relief, enabling a chatbot-like experience. Yet, incumbent enterprise systems like ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, or Jira Service Management are often required to enable this experience.

Atomicwork's innovative approach replaces the need for these incumbent systems, offering a modern AI-driven experience that enables enterprises to automate service workflows. Employees can use these workflows to find work-related answers or access services from departments including HR, IT, or finance through integrations with popular apps like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Intune, Okta, Notion, Salesforce, and GitHub, among others.

Vijay Rayapati, co-founder and CEO of Atomicwork, defines the platform as a "full-stack AI ServiceNow," targeting global companies with around $1 billion in revenue and at least 1,000 people. In an exclusive interview, Rayapati highlighted the architectural differences between Atomicwork and traditional IT service management platforms like ServiceNow, which were built 25-30 years ago.

Unlike deploying ServiceNow or similar platforms, which involves multi-year implementation cycles, Atomicwork's platform can be implemented in as little as a couple of weeks, according to Rayapati. The startup also provides a universal agent to assist enterprises in setting up automated workflows.

Founded in 2022 by Rayapati, who previously founded the cloud management platform Minjar, which was acquired by Nutanix in 2018, along with Kiran Darisi and Parsuram Vijayasankar, both part of Freshworks' founding team, Atomicwork initially started with an AI assistant to automate enterprise workflows. As automation demand grew and AI capabilities advanced, the startup introduced its agentic service management platform late last year, which brings context-aware AI agents that analyze multiple data sources to perform tasks across enterprise apps.

Atomicwork's platform utilizes existing large language models (LLMs) from OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, and Meta, along with its in-house small models, which it uses for intent detection, routing, and slot filing, to enable workflow automation. The startup addresses data security and safety concerns by offering enterprises the option to own the encryption keys for their data or bring their own model endpoints into Atomicwork.

The all-equity Series A round, co-led by Khosla Ventures and Z47 (previously called Matrix Partners India), also saw participation from Battery Ventures, Blume Ventures, and Peak XV Partners. This follows a $3.3 million round involving over 40 CIOs, CTOs, and industry experts in September last year and a seed round of $11 million in 2023, bringing the total funding to over $38 million.

Currently, Atomicwork has eight customers, most of whom are in the U.S., including Ammex Corporation, Zuora, and Pepper Money. The startup plans to utilize the new investment to attract more customers by "doubling down" its AI R&D to bolster its platform engineering, strengthen its product and technology, and invest in building more strategic partnerships to expand integrations with companies including Oracle and SAP.

Rayapati did not disclose the exact valuation but said it was close to 5x the total capital it raised in the new round. Atomicwork has a team of more than 60 people, including over 50 in India.

As the startup continues to scale and deploy its AI-powered service management platform, it's likely to have a significant impact on the IT service management market, enabling enterprises to provide faster and more efficient support to their employees.

With its futuristic approach, Atomicwork is poised to revolutionize the way humans and AI agents interact within businesses, bringing about a new era of automation and innovation in the industry.