For sixteen editions I've argued that a services firm can run on its own AI, sell the finished work and earn software margins. The obvious question is who's actually doing it.

There are a few lists of these firms already, from investors, newsletters and directories. I wanted the most complete one, so on 23 October we launched the AI-Native Services Map. It has every firm we could find that sells professional work, done by its own people on technology it builds itself, with every round and investor we could find a source for.

It now has 509 firms in 40 countries, 334 investors and 244 funding rounds and acquisitions. I went through all of it.

A firm makes the map if it passes four tests. It sells the service, not the tool: the client buys a drafted contract or a filed tax return, not a seat. It builds its own technology, though running on GPT or Claude is fine. Qualified people stay in the loop and answer for the work. And AI does far more of the work than it would at a traditional firm.

Pricing doesn't matter. A firm can bill by the hour and still count.

Legal has 118 firms and accounting and tax has 108. Add insurance's 49 and those three markets make up more than half the map. After them it's a long tail: healthcare 36, consulting 24, real estate 23, fund administration 22, M&A 21.

I'm not surprised law and accounting lead. Most of the work ends in a document a qualified person signs, and AI is already good at first drafts. Both professions also struggle to hire and train juniors, which I wrote about in Edition #14.

Count the money instead and insurance comes first. Its firms have raised $2.4 billion, 40% of all the equity on the map, with one in ten of the firms. Legal has 13% and accounting 9%.

Per firm, that's about $50 million in insurance, $6.5 million in legal and $5 million in accounting.

Part of the gap is how insurance works. Corgi and Alan are carriers, and a carrier needs capital behind every policy it writes. A law firm doesn't.

Firms on the map raised $335 million in 2024 and $1.2 billion in 2025. This year it's $3.6 billion so far, three times last year with two months still to go.

The number of rounds doubled, from 52 last year to 109 this year. The typical round barely moved: the median went from about $13 million to $14.5 million. So the money is going to more firms, in cheques of about the same size.

These were the biggest rounds of the year:

Corgi raised three times by May: $108 million in January (its seed and Series A together), then $160 million and $106 million three weeks apart. Dwelly's $170 million Series B in July was $95 million of equity and $75 million of debt. I count only the equity, as I do for every round.

Two in five of the firms are in one of three cities.

San Francisco has the most, 82, and 33 of them came through YC. Corgi and Harper, both insurance firms, are two of the 33.

New York has 69 and got the most money this year, $1.1 billion. KKR led Reserv's $125 million round and Khosla led Norm Ai's $120 million.

London has 42, and 18 of them work in legal. In England and Wales, outside investors have been allowed to own law firms for over a decade. Most US states still ban it, with Arizona the main exception. So a London startup can own and run a regulated law firm. Lawhive bought one, Woodstock Legal Services, last year, and Garfield AI became the first AI-driven law firm the SRA approved.

I'd expect the first big AI-native law firm to come out of London.

YC has asked for AI-native services in five of its last six Requests for Startups, most recently "The $15-an-Hour Expert" in Winter 2027.

It backs more of these firms than anyone else, too: 59 on the map, against 9 for General Catalyst, the next most active investor. 27 of YC's came from its 2026 batches alone, and insurance is its biggest bet, with 16 firms.

Across the whole map, three in five of the firms with a known founding year started in 2024 or later: 82 last year and 66 so far this year.

430 firms on the map were built AI-native from day one. 47 started as software companies and now sell the work. And 27 are roll-ups, which buy traditional firms and rebuild them on AI.

The roll-ups do the biggest deals. Long Lake agreed in May to buy American Express Global Business Travel for $6.3 billion. Shield Technology Partners has bought at least eight managed IT providers, and Current, formerly Crete Professionals Alliance, at least seven accounting firms.

Eilla sits on the other side of these deals. We advise owners who are selling their firms, and we're mostly paid when deals close. If you own a services firm, there are now buyers who want it because they think AI can make it more profitable.

The map is updated every week, and the people on it can change it themselves.

If your firm is on it, claim the profile with your work email and your edits go live straight away. Each profile also has a ready-made LinkedIn post with a picture of your pin.

If it isn't, suggest it. Readers suggested 92 firms in the first week: 28 passed the four tests and are live, 12 are still being checked, and more than half didn't pass.

Every investor has a profile with its portfolio, rounds and co-investors, and the graph view shows who backs whom. What's new lists each round, acquisition and new firm as it's added, with an RSS feed and a monthly email. The market map builder turns any filter into a map you can download.

There's also an events page, a forum and a WhatsApp group for people building, backing and working with these firms.

The same build now runs two more maps: The Legal Tech Map and AI Deployment Firms.

Insurance has the money today. I think accounting is next. It has a fifth of the firms and 9% of the money, and buyers have started moving in: Modus raised $85 million in April to invest in audit-first accounting firms, and Current has bought at least seven.

Before the end of 2027 I expect an AI-native accounting firm to raise $100 million or more in a single round. The only one on the map to have done it is Pilot, in 2021.

Which firm should be on the map that isn't? Reply and tell me, or add it yourself at ainativeservicesmap.com.

The map: ainativeservicesmap.com, data as of 30 October 2026. Money figures are disclosed equity rounds; debt facilities are left out, and so are AI-deployment firms (such as OpenAI's Deployment Company and Ode) and Thrive Holdings. Euros are converted at 1.08, except Alan's round, which Bloomberg Law reports as about $550 million.

Alan: Bloomberg Law. TENEX.AI: SiliconANGLE. Corgi: Corgi's Series B1 release. Reserv: Gibson Dunn. Norm Ai: PR Newswire. Savvy Wealth: Business Wire. Shield Technology Partners: Business Wire. Dwelly: Dwelly, Goodwin.

Long Lake and Amex GBT: PYMNTS. Modus: Accounting Today. Pilot: CNBC. Lawhive and Woodstock: Legal Cheek. Garfield AI: SRA. YC's Requests for Startups: ycombinator.com/rfs.