Here’s something wild that just happened. On December 11, 2025, Serval-a company founded in 2024 that basically didn’t exist a year ago-just hit a $1 billion valuation. Not in 10 years. Not in 5 years. In less than a year. They went from $232 million in August to $1 billion in December. That’s a 331% jump in just four months. Sequoia Capital led the Series B round, and honestly, they couldn’t wait. They preempted the round. So what’s actually going on here? Why is one of the world’s best venture capital firms comparing this to ServiceNow sixteen years ago? Let’s break it down.
What Serval Do?
Let’s start with the problem Serval solves. Every big company has an IT department drowning in tickets. An employee’s laptop breaks. Another needs access to a new software. Someone gets onboarded, needs accounts created, passwords reset-the list never ends. IT teams spend way too much time on repetitive stuff that could be automated.
Serval is an AI-native IT service management (ITSM) platform that deploys AI agents for IT teams. Think of it as an AI help desk that actually works. The platform uses a two-part AI system: an AI agent that interacts with employees to understand their support requests, plus a tool that allows administrators to build complex automations by describing them in natural language-what CEO Jake Stauch calls “vibe coding”. The AI generates the actual code behind the scenes.
The result? Serval automates over 50% of IT tickets for customers like Perplexity, Together AI, Clay, Mercor, BILT, and Verkada. That’s not incremental improvement. That’s transformational.
But here’s where it gets bigger: Serval expanded from powering IT automation to becoming a horizontal automation engine adopted by HR, Finance, Legal, Security, and Engineering. Multiple customers fully replaced incumbent ITSM tools and moved their system of record to Serval. That’s why Sequoia compared it to ServiceNow.
Serval’s Long-Term Vision
CEO Jake Stauch said: “We built Serval from the ground up to be a full enterprise ITSM with frictionless, AI-powered automation as our core differentiator. We’re seeing that thesis play out as customers rip and replace incumbent systems of record”.
Serval wants to become what ServiceNow is today-but better, faster, and AI-powered. The company notes that “automation should be faster to build once than to do manually even a single time-but legacy ITSM platforms never reached that bar. Their automation depended on brittle workflow builders, complex branching logic, and months of upkeep. Modern AI made a new approach possible”.
Long-term, Serval is positioning itself to replace legacy enterprise systems across the entire company-not just IT. HR needs workflow automation? Serval. Finance needs approval processes? Serval. Legal needs contract workflows? Serval. They’re building a horizontal enterprise automation platform where AI agents handle the heavy lifting across all departments.
Its Recent Funding
Let’s talk money. December 11, 2025: Serval raised $75 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia, with participation from Redpoint, Meritech, First Round, General Catalyst, Evantic, and others. This brings Serval’s total funding to $127 million, just three months after its $47 million Series A this past August.
Here’s the insane part: this was a preempted round. Sequoia moved so fast they beat other investors to the punch. Why? Because Serval grew revenue 500% since August and more than tripled its headcount. That kind of traction is unicorn-level stuff.
Anas Biad, partner at Sequoia, said: “The last time we heard customer feedback this strong-and the thesis of ‘IT system of record with horizontal automation’-was sixteen years ago when we partnered with ServiceNow. That’s why we pre-empted Serval’s Series B”. When Sequoia compares you to ServiceNow, that’s the ultimate stamp of approval.
How Serval Makes Money ?
Serval operates a SaaS subscription model-straightforward pricing based on scale and usage.
Customers pay monthly or annually for access to the platform. Pricing depends on the number of employees, automations being run, and which departments are using it. An IT department might start small-maybe paying a base amount. Then as they expand to HR, Finance, and other departments, the bill grows automatically. Bigger enterprises pay significantly more.
The beauty of the model is that as companies deploy Serval more widely-automating more tickets and bringing in more departments-their bills increase automatically. That’s recurring, expanding revenue. Unlike traditional licensing, Serval charges based on automation scope and complexity.
With 500% revenue growth since August and customers actively replacing entire legacy systems, the company is clearly printing money. They’re not burning cash. This is profitable growth.
The customer roster tells the real story: Mercor, Tesla-adjacent companies, Perplexity, Clay, Together AI, BILT, and Verkada. These aren’t small companies. These are forward-thinking organizations building the future, and they all chose Serval to power their operations.
The path from AI tool to $1 billion valuation is clear: product works, customers love it, revenue explodes exponentially, and market size is massive. It checked every box. That’s how you get a $1 billion valuation in less than a year.
Source:- Reuters and Internet
Hi Friends, This is Swapnil, I am a content writer at startupsunion.com