Artificial intelligence-powered private credit operations platform Ellis has launched after raising more than $10m (£7.5m) in seed funding.

The financing was led by First Round Capital, with investors including 645 Ventures, Harlem Capital, Khosla Ventures, Slow Ventures, Wilshire Lane, Westbound, Collide Capital and Gallery Ventures.

Individual investors included Ariel Alternatives chief executive Mellody Hobson, Thrive Capital founder Josh Kushner and Mercury founder and chief executive Immad Akhund.

Ellis describes itself as the first AI-native operations platform designed specifically for the private credit market. The company said many private credit managers continue to operate critical processes across disconnected fund administrator reports, general ledgers, loan servicing systems, bank data, legal documents and spreadsheets.

This can require teams to spend significant time reconciling different versions of the same data, delaying fund closes and investor reporting while increasing operational risk.

Read more: T. Rowe Price and GSAM unveil new private markets fund

Ellis’ platform is designed to create a single, reconciled and source-verifiable data foundation across the systems and documents used by private credit firms. Specialist AI agents can then carry out the initial stages of recurring operational work, including reconciling positions and cash flows, identifying anomalies and tracing exceptions.

The technology can also support fund closing, limited partner reporting, portfolio monitoring and compliance processes.

Ellis said that human teams retain control over all material decisions and approvals, while the platform’s outputs remain explainable, reviewable and traceable to their original source.

The company was founded by Ryan Williams, who previously founded institutional alternatives investment platform Cadre. Cadre facilitated approximately $6bn of transaction value through its platform.

Read more: Redemptions rise across private credit funds in Q2 as software risks build

Williams said his experience building Cadre had demonstrated how fragmented data and manual processes could restrict innovation in private markets.

“Ellis is the company I wished existed every day I was building Cadre,” said Williams. “We were creating new ways to invest in private markets, but behind every innovation sat the same operating problem: critical data lived across systems that did not speak to one another, and teams spent too much time proving which numbers were right.”

Williams added that the largest firms had historically been able to develop bespoke technology and employ extensive operational teams, while smaller managers were expected to meet similar institutional standards with fewer resources.

“We believe ‘institutional’ should describe how well a firm operates, not how much it can afford to spend on infrastructure,” he said. “Ellis is building the trusted foundation that allows more managers to compete, scale and win.”