Rowspace launches with $50M to turn institutional knowledge into compounding edge for finance

Sequoia leads Seed and Series A funding to help firms operationalize proprietary data for AI

Published on Feb. 25, 2026

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Rowspace, an AI platform that accelerates financial services firms' decision making based on their proprietary data, launched today with $50 million in funding across a Series A co-led by Sequoia and Emergence Capital and a seed round led by Sequoia. The company aims to help finance firms leverage their institutional knowledge and data to make faster and more informed decisions.

Why it matters

Rowspace's platform connects structured and unstructured data across a firm's entire history, allowing them to apply their institutional knowledge and judgment to data-intensive work. This eliminates the tradeoff between speed and fully informed, nuanced decision-making that finance firms often face.

The details

Rowspace's AI platform pulls data from a firm's document repositories, investment and accounting systems, data infrastructure, and more, and applies a finance-native lens to help the firm reconcile information, interpret discrepancies, and make decisions. The platform can be integrated directly into a firm's existing workflows and data infrastructure.

  • Rowspace launched on February 25, 2026 with $50 million in funding.

The players

Rowspace

An AI platform that accelerates financial services firms' decision making based on their proprietary data.

Michael Manapat

Co-founder and CEO of Rowspace, previously built the machine learning systems at Stripe and helped drive Notion's expansion into AI.

Yibo Ling

Co-founder and COO of Rowspace, a former CFO who has managed a major investment portfolio.

Sequoia

A venture capital firm that co-led Rowspace's Series A funding and led the seed round.

Emergence Capital

A venture capital firm that co-led Rowspace's Series A funding.

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What they’re saying

“Finance is full of high-stakes decisions. There used to be a tradeoff between moving quickly and making fully informed, nuanced decisions using all the possible data at a firm's disposal. Our AI platform eliminates that tradeoff.”

— Michael Manapat, Co-founder and CEO of Rowspace (PRNewswire)

“I've lived this problem. As a former CFO who's managed a major investment portfolio, I've made decisions by synthesizing data across fragmented systems. Most tech tools aren't comprehensive or nuanced enough for finance. And most finance tools need to raise their technical ceiling. We intend to do both.”

— Yibo Ling, Co-founder and COO of Rowspace (PRNewswire)

“Michael built the machine learning systems at Stripe that process billions of transactions and helped drive Notion's expansion into AI. Yibo has been a finance leader and investor who's wrestled with the exact challenges Rowspace is solving. They've seen the problem from both sides, pairing technical depth with firsthand understanding of what customers actually need. That combination is rare.”

— Alfred Lin, Investor, Sequoia (PRNewswire)

“We back founders who bring lived experience to big, enterprise goals—basically the definition of the Rowspace team. They're doing the previously impossible work of connecting proprietary data, and reconciling and reasoning over it with real rigor. Without this foundation, it doesn't matter what other AI tools you're using.”

— Jake Saper, General Partner, Emergence Capital (PRNewswire)

What’s next

Rowspace plans to scale quickly this year across its San Francisco and New York offices, with a focus on engineering and research talent.

The takeaway

Rowspace's AI platform aims to help finance firms leverage their institutional knowledge and proprietary data to make faster, more informed decisions, eliminating the tradeoff between speed and nuance that firms often face. The company's combination of technical depth and firsthand finance experience sets it apart in addressing this challenge.