$2.2m · Pre-Seed · AI · Munich, Germany
Munich-based Sherpa has raised $2.2m in pre-seed funding co-led by Seedcamp, DN Capital, Activant Capital and Brighteye, with operator angels also participating. The company says the capital will help build its team and bring its first enterprise deployments to life.
Founded in 2026 by Tristan Deschler, Tim Altpeter and Max Lang, Sherpa is developing an AI operating system for external work. The product is intended to manage contingent workers, freelancers, service suppliers and AI agents through one workflow, from a business request and worker classification to governance and payment.
Work requests become an orchestration problem
Seedcamp describes the existing market as a patchwork of vendor-management systems and managed-service providers that can be slow to deploy and expensive to maintain. Sherpa's proposition is to turn a request for work into a routed process: decide whether the task belongs with an internal team, external talent or an AI agent, then scope, approve, monitor and pay for the engagement in one system.
The commercial value depends on visibility and control rather than automation alone. External labour touches procurement, finance, HR, legal and operational teams, while invoices and compliance records often sit in different systems. A shared workflow could reduce coordination costs and expose spend that is difficult to see. It also raises the integration bar: Sherpa has to fit enterprise identity, procurement, contract and payment systems while preserving an auditable record of who approved what.
AI agents widen the governance surface
Sherpa says it is building with a handful of enterprise design partners. That gives the company real engagements against which to test classification, policy and payment flows, but early design partnerships are not yet proof of repeatable deployment. The product must handle different company rules and jurisdictions without turning each customer into a bespoke implementation.
Including AI agents in the same operating model is the more distinctive bet. Enterprises already struggle to assign ownership and measure outcomes across contractors and service providers; software agents add questions about access, accountability and payment. If Sherpa can apply one governance layer across human and machine-delivered work, it can sit closer to the decision about how work gets done. The next test is whether its first deployments convert that broad vision into shorter onboarding, better spend visibility and reliable compliance controls.
Sources checked:
Sherpa funding announcement · Seedcamp · Sherpa company page · Tech.eu Funding Explorer
