Thira Raises $21 Million Seed Round Led by Madrona to Build the Back-Office That Runs Itself

Apptio founders introduce a new Agentic System of Execution powered by secure, self-learning AI, bringing enterprises closer to a back-office that runs itself.

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Thira, creator of secure, self-learning AI system of execution built for the enterprise, today announced a $21 million seed financing led by Madrona, with participation from FUSE and a group of prominent global advisors and CIOs. Apptio co-founders Sunny Gupta and Kurt Shintaffer are reuniting as part of the founding team behind Thira. Together, with a broader founding and early team including Mudit Goel, former SVP of Engineering at Atlassian; Grant Neuman, former AI Engineer at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure; Tarek Madkour, former Director of Product Management at Databricks; and Shashwat Srivastav, former founder and lead AI engineer at AIVOT, they are pursuing a simple vision: creating the back-office that runs itself, initially focused on enterprise IT processes. Matt McIlwain, Managing Director at Madrona, who previously partnered with Gupta at both iConclude and Apptio, will join Thira's board of directors. Kellan Carter from FUSE will also be joining Thira as a board observer.

Designed to operate within the enterprise systems organizations already rely on, Thira securely executes complex operational processes using self-learning agents, world class security and governance, system connectivity and AI execution system powered by an enterprise knowledge graph.

"CIOs are at the forefront of bringing AI innovation to the enterprises and are realizing that the real opportunity is executing complex processes that touch disparate systems with enterprise level controls," said Sunny Gupta, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Thira. "I spent a decade and a half proving we could be trusted with visibility into enterprise technology spend. Now we're building Thira to act on it and change the outcomes for every enterprise back-office through agentic execution."

After helping define the FinOps/Technology Business Management (TBM) category, Sunny Gupta and Kurt Shintaffer saw the next challenge emerging. Through decades of partnership with CIOs and enterprise technology leaders, they consistently heard the need for trusted systems capable of securely executing complex workflows that touch many disparate systems, not just providing insights. Today, ten enterprise organizations are helping shape Thira as design partners ahead of its broader launch this fall. They founded the TBM Council, under Apptio (now part of IBM), which grew to more than 10,000 CIOs and senior IT leaders.

"AI systems of execution are core to the future enterprise, and the office of the CIO requires an AI-native approach to building such a transformative system,” said Matt McIlwain, Managing Director at Madrona. "Sunny, Kurt and the Thira team have earned the trust of CIOs over two decades by delivering on IT automation and the system of record for technology spend. Now, they have assembled the perfect blend of proven enterprise product builders and AI-native innovators to deliver durable solutions that will once again help CIOs and their teams be heroes in their organizations. This is my third time starting and building a company with Sunny and it is by far the largest opportunity we have pursued together."

Global IT spending alone exceeds $6.3 trillion annually, with a significant portion dedicated to manual, repetitive operational work. Thira's mission is to return $1 trillion of enterprise spending for reinvestment in innovation by changing how enterprise processes gets executed. The company will use the new funding to expand its engineering team and deepen collaboration with design partners.

About Thira

Thira is the creator of secure, self-learning, agentic execution for complex workflows that power the back-office. Designed to work across disparate systems organizations already rely on, Thira combines self-learning agents, world class security and governance, system connectivity and an enterprise knowledge graph to automate complex back-office work with enterprise-grade visibility and control. Founded in 2026 by Sunny Gupta and Kurt Shintaffer, the co-founders of Apptio, Thira is headquartered in Bellevue, WA. Learn more at thira.com.