Ascerta raises USD $18 million in Series A funding

Ascerta has raised USD $18 million in a Series A funding round led by Dell Technologies Capital and changed its name from Pay-i.

The funding brings the Bellevue-based company's total capital raised to USD $22.9 million.

Ascerta sells software designed to help large organisations track the cost, use and business returns of artificial intelligence tools. Many companies can measure technical activity such as token consumption, agent runs and AI-generated code, but still struggle to judge whether those projects are delivering commercial value.

The new funding will support the expansion of Ascerta's Enterprise AI Management platform, which is designed to give Chief Information Officers, Chief Financial Officers and other AI leaders a single view of spending, adoption and outcomes across an organisation.

Investors in the round included Hitachi Ventures, BGV, Wipro Ventures and earlier backers. The company was founded in 2024 by former Microsoft executives David Tepper, Doron Holan and Erik Winters.

Ascerta emerged from stealth in 2025 under the Pay-i name after raising a USD $4.9 million seed round focused on AI cost management. The rebrand reflects a broader pitch to customers as companies move from pilot projects to wider AI deployment.

From Cost To Value

Ascerta argues that enterprises now need more than conventional FinOps tools, which are generally used to monitor and control technology spending. As AI use spreads across copilots, coding assistants, internal applications and model infrastructure, executives want to know not just what these systems cost, but whether they improve productivity, reduce waste or create measurable business gains.

Its platform connects with existing enterprise AI systems and software tools, including internally built applications and products such as Microsoft Copilot, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Salesforce Agentforce, GitHub Copilot, Claude Code and Codex. Ascerta says it tracks AI activity from individual users and teams through to specific business outcomes, while also measuring less visible costs such as sub-token charges, hidden fees and contract discounts.

The company groups its software into three products. Atlas focuses on measuring AI value, adoption and return on investment across workflows and portfolios. Forge is aimed at engineering teams using coding agents. Convoy is designed for organisations that run their own AI capacity and want to increase use without disrupting existing operations.

Ascerta said customers using its platform have, on average, improved return on investment on AI initiatives by 47%, reduced launch times by 24% and cut wasted AI spending by 86%. Those figures were not independently verified.

Customer Base

Ascerta says it works with customers including Atos, Wipro and global insurance carriers, and with partners including Microsoft, AWS, IBM, Slalom and Trace3. Atos is using the software as it seeks to move agentic AI projects from pilot stages into production across its operations.

"The market is full of meaningless vanity metrics," said David Tepper, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Ascerta. "Companies are counting tokens, lines of generated code and agent runs, struggling to derive the impact AI has on their business. We built Ascerta to cut through the noise and give organizations the means to win in the AI era. That means insights specific to their business, people and use cases. That means purpose-built tools to prevent waste and aggressively optimize for value. Ascerta is a guide through one of the most pivotal eras of transformation in history."

The leadership team draws heavily on Microsoft experience. Tepper spent 19 years at the software group and worked on internal generative AI strategy for Azure, while Holan spent 27 years there and worked on infrastructure for large-scale request handling.

Ascerta's pitch comes as investors and corporate buyers scrutinise the economics of AI projects more closely. After an initial rush into experimentation, many large organisations are deciding which deployments to expand and which to abandon.

That shift has created an opening for vendors promising clearer links between AI spending and business performance. In Ascerta's case, that means tracking use by person, team and use case, then tying those patterns to the key performance indicators each project was meant to influence.

Atos said that approach has helped it gain more oversight as it expands the use of AI agents.

"At Atos, our Sovereign Agentic Studios operating model is built on moving agentic AI from pilot to production at global scale," said Florin Rotar, Group Chief Technology Officer and Chief AI Officer at Atos. "That requires measurable business value, not just technical capability. Ascerta has been instrumental in delivering on that promise, giving us the visibility and control we need to scale AI initiatives with confidence."

Dell Technologies Capital said Ascerta is responding to a growing need among enterprises to assess AI projects on business terms rather than technical output alone.

"Ascerta is building the system of record for AI value creation," said Raman Khanna, Managing Director at Dell Technologies Capital. "Most enterprises are moving beyond broad AI experimentation and focusing their investments on what delivers measurable business value. David and the Ascerta team are giving leaders the visibility and rigor they need to understand what's working, optimize spending and scale their most successful AI initiatives. We're excited to partner with Ascerta as they define the Enterprise AI Management category."