Dive Brief:

• Fintech startup Ramp has raised $200 million, at a $16 billion valuation, led by billionaire Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, the New York City-based company said Tuesday.
• Ramp investors in the latest funding included Thrive Capital, the firm founded by Joshua Kushner, the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and 8VC, a venture capital firm co-founded by Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir Technologies, with Thiel.
• Ramp’s platform is focused on using artificial intelligence intuitively on behalf of customers that may not have the resources to pursue AI tools on their own, Ramp’s co-founder and CEO, Eric Glyman, wrote Monday in a letter to investors. “And here's our commitment to you: this is the worst our product will ever be,” he wrote.

Dive Insight:

Ramp offers corporate clients tools that handle tasks such as expense management, accounting, travel and procurement along with corporate cards and software to analyze and optimize corporate spending. 

Many of the 14 firms were previous investors in the Ramp, which says it counts 40,000 companies as customers and facilitates $80 billion in annual purchase volume. Thrive Capital, based in New York City, and Austin, Texas-based 8VC did not immediately respond to emails Tuesday seeking comment on their investment.

Ramp drew attention in April when ProPublica reported the company had leveraged its political connections among Republicans to lobby for a General Services Administration contract to revamp the SmartPay charge card that federal employees use.

The prior contracts for that work, from 2017, went to Citi and U.S. Bank and were valued at as much as $700 billion through 2031, according to the GSA. Ramp gained at least four meetings with GSA officials appointed by President Donald Trump to discuss such work, the publication reported. 

The Visa and Mastercard-branded cards cover federal staff at about 550 agencies, allowing them to purchase travel, office supplies, gasoline and other work-related expenses. 

“The RFI process is still ongoing and we're one of many vendors being considered,” a Ramp spokeswoman said Tuesday in an email.

Ramp has raised about $2 billion in total venture funding since it was established in 2019.

In the Ramp CEO’s letter this week, titled “let the robots chase receipts,” Glyman described the company as a “net for catching hours and dollars. It’s ‘quiet efficiency.’”