Chicago’s Honeycomb Insurance raises $40M for AI-driven property underwriting

Honeycomb Insurance, a Chicago digital insurer using AI to underwrite coverage for apartment buildings and condominium associations, has raised $40 million, the company announced last week. This comes just two years after its last raise of $35 million and brings the firm’s total funding to around $95 million.

Zeev Ventures led the financing, with existing investor Ibex Investors also taking part, alongside new backers Peakline, Alpha Partners, Meitar Partners, and Practical VC. Harris Barton, a former San Francisco 49ers player, also joined the round as an individual investor.

The company said it will use the capital to expand into additional states, improve its agent-facing tools, broaden its product lines, and continue developing its AI underwriting platform

Honeycomb sells property and casualty coverage to landlords and condo associations - a segment it says traditional carriers often overlook or misprice. Rather than manual underwriting, the company said its platform draws on hundreds of data points per property, including geospatial and environmental data, building characteristics, and historical performance, and uses AI models and high-resolution imagery to price each building individually. Honeycomb said the approach removes the need for physical inspections.

The company reported $275 million in gross written premium by the end of 2025 and said it manages more than $100 billion in insured assets. It offers admitted and non-admitted products (types of insurance that are and are not guaranteed by individual states, the latter being more flexible but also riskier) across 22 states, which it says cover more than 65% of the U.S. population. Honeycomb is headquartered in Chicago and keeps offices in the U.S. and Israel.

“We are building Honeycomb to be the category leader in commercial real estate insurance,” said Itai Ben-Zaken, co-founder and CEO. “We didn’t add AI to a legacy offering. Our platform is centered on proprietary data and AI models to underwrite each property individually.” He said the funding would accelerate expansion into new states and product lines.

Oren Zeev, founding partner of Zeev Ventures, said Honeycomb had scaled quickly while keeping a lean operation, a combination he described as rare in insurance.

‍