Small Biz Insurer Next Insurance Raises $265M

Next Insurance raised a massive $265 million strategic round from insurance giants Allstate and Allianz’s investment arm, Allianz X.

The Palo Alto, California-based startup, which specializes in small business insurance products, has now raised more than $1.1 billion since being founded in 2016, per the company.

The deal forms a new strategic partnership with Allstate and deepens an existing reinsurance relationship with Allianz.

“We founded NEXT because we saw an opportunity to help millions of small and microbusinesses across the U.S. and made it our mission to help entrepreneurs thrive,” co-founder and CEO Guy Goldstein said in a release. “Building on our existing support, we are excited to welcome Allianz X and Allstate as investors, deepen our reinsurance relationship with Allianz Re, and foster a meaningful partnership with Allstate to offer millions of their customers our one-stop-shop small business insurance offering.”

Interestingly, Next did not offer a valuation with the new round. The company was valued at $4 billion in April 2021 when it raised a $250 million Series E led by FinTLV and Battery Ventures. Many valuations of startups, however, have dropped since then.

Next, which uses AI and machine learning to help with the purchasing process and provide coverages, serves more than 500,000 business owners. It has committed to serving the more than 33 million small businesses in the U.S. moving forward.

Insurtech funding

The round is one of the largest raised this year in the insurtech industry.

Per Crunchbase data, insurtech startups have raised nearly $11 billion this year — however, $6.5 billion of that was Stripe’s Series I raise in March.

Last year, startups in the sector raised almost $9.2 billion, while in 2021 — a record year for venture funding — insurtech firms saw nearly $16 billion in funding.