New York – September 22, 2026 -- Ande, an AI-native network for corporate entertainment, emerged from stealth with more than $52 million in seed and Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Duration Ventures, and Sierra Ventures, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures.
Enterprises spend an estimated $325 billion annually on entertainment, yet booking and expense tracking remain fragmented.
Client dinners, team outings, catering, sporting events, and gifting are currently managed across credit cards, accounts payable systems, and consumer apps, creating a manual reconciliation burden for corporate finance teams.
More than 60 enterprises already route entertainment spend through Ande, citing savings of 12 to 15 percent.
Customers including Cloudflare, Salesforce, McGraw Hill, Netskope, Navan, Sigma Computing, Monday.com, Workato, Semgrep, Checkout, and Rillet collectively push more than $400 million in entertainment spend through the platform each year.
Ande's agentic workflows surface venue availability, book experiences, route approvals, execute contracts, and reconcile expenses automatically. Executive assistants, office managers, field marketers, and go-to-market teams operate in a shared workspace while software agents move requests through approval, signing, and payment.
Ande built a corporate distribution channel for 93,000 entertainment venues across more than 90 cities.
The network includes 1,600 hospitality venue partners spanning groups such as Altamarea Group, Che Fico, Gracious Hospitality, JKS, The Mina Group, MML, Nobu, Riviera Dining Group, Tao Group Hospitality, Unapologetic Foods, Bacchus Management Group, Wish You Were Here, and Wolfgang Puck. Lohit Sarma, CEO and co-founder of Ande, said the company spent two and a half years working with venues to digitize their data and train models for enterprise-specific booking workflows.
Vicky Chung, Director of Corporate Events at Netskope, said the platform gives her team real-time visibility into event logistics, letting staff focus on executive engagement rather than operational coordination.
Arif Janmohamed, Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners and co-founder of Duration Ventures, called entertainment the largest enterprise expense line still lacking financial management infrastructure. Redpoint Ventures Managing Director Alex Bard cited Sarma's combination of startup and enterprise experience as central to the firm's investment decision.