Rushil Goel launches Mandl: an AI-native insurance company built on Nirvana's $300M engine

• AI company Mandl launched on October 19, 2026, announced by CEO Rushil Goel at the 2026 Target Markets TMPAA Summit.
• Mandl grows two ways: building new AI-native companies (like Vega and Cooper) and acquiring innovators; each operates independently.
• Nirvana, Goel’s AI-native insurer, now exceeds $300 million in run-rate premium with top-tier loss ratio performance.
• Vega, Mandl’s AI-native claims administrator, delivers claims cycle times 4x faster than the industry standard.
• Cooper is Mandl’s AI operations platform for agencies, brokerages, MGAs, and carriers.
• Backers: General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Valor Equity Partners; headquarters: San Francisco.

A new AI company for the industry that prices risk

"Insurance is the quiet force that lets ambition outrun risk, and there’s an incredible opportunity to rebuild it for the millions of businesses that depend on it," said Rushil Goel, founder and CEO of Mandl, in the company’s launch announcement on Monday. "We’ve already proven that an AI-native model works across underwriting, claims, and operations to improve how businesses price risk, recover from losses, and get coverage that fits. Launching Mandl is the natural next step."

Mandl’s pitch is blunt: commercial insurance still prices most businesses by category and averages, the way it has for decades. The company plans to expand across the value chain in two ways — building new AI-native companies, as it did with Vega and Cooper, and acquiring firms that share its vision. Every Mandl company operates as an independent business, with backing to grow faster than it could alone.

The portfolio: Nirvana, Vega, and Cooper

The engine room is Nirvana, the AI-native commercial insurer Goel cofounded, which has grown to more than $300 million in run-rate premium with top-tier loss ratio performance. "We built Nirvana to understand risk better than anyone else, so every business pays for how it actually operates," said Jon Hammer, previously Nirvana’s general manager and now its CEO. He leads the company alongside cofounder and Chief Actuary Alex Carges, while Goel stays on as chairman. "The best operators should pay the least, and with Nirvana, they finally can," Hammer added.

Vega, Mandl’s AI-native claims administrator, is already delivering claims cycle times four times faster than the industry standard. "Businesses don’t buy insurance for the policy, they buy it for the moment something goes wrong," said cofounder and CEO Talha Zubair. "As part of Mandl, we can finally make that the standard across the industry." Cooper, meanwhile, brings an AI-native operations platform to agencies, brokerages, MGAs, and carriers, with what the company describes as a mission to make every insurance professional extraordinary. "Insurance professionals lose hours every day to work that AI should handle," said cofounder and CEO Akhilesh Koppineni.

Why Goel’s track record matters

Before Nirvana, Goel was an executive at Samsara (NYSE: IOT), where he led the Connected Fleets platform from the ground up to more than $500 million in annual revenue. That combination — an AI-native insurer already clearing $300 million in premium, plus an operator who has scaled industrial-scale software before — is the thesis investors bought into.

Mandl says it will share more about its growth in the coming months and is hiring across technology, finance, strategy, and operations. The open question is whether the build-and-acquire playbook can do to insurance’s middlemen and manual workflows what AI-native underwriting has already done to Nirvana’s risk book. The company points to the numbers: $300 million of premium priced the AI way, claims resolved in a fraction of the legacy time. If those scale across an acquired book of business, "rebuild the full engine" stops being a slogan.