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OneByZero raised a $20M Series A led by Jungle Ventures to deploy and govern AI agents inside existing enterprise systems across nine Asia-Pacific markets and, next, Japan.
Key Takeaways
- Singapore's OneByZero raised $20M in a Series A led by Jungle Ventures on October 5, 2026.
- It is the company's first outside capital. Valuation and other investors were not disclosed.
- Revenue has more than doubled each year for three years, per the company. The money funds engineers, NEO, and entry into Japan.
Lead
OneByZero, a Singapore-based enterprise AI company, announced a $20M Series A on October 5, 2026, led by Jungle Ventures. The round is its first external funding since the company was founded in 2023. The company sells a deployment service and a governance platform called NEO, which puts AI agents to work inside the systems large companies already run. Funds will go toward hiring engineers, building out NEO and its "AI Coworkers" agents, and opening a Japan team.
What Does OneByZero Actually Sell?
OneByZero sells engineering labor and software together. It places its own engineers inside client companies to build AI into existing systems, then keeps improving those deployments after launch. The industry calls this a "forward-deployed" model.
NEO is the control layer on top. According to the company, it records agent actions, caps agent activity and marks zones where a human must make the call. The AI Coworkers are agents with defined roles and those controls attached. The pitch is that people keep judgement and accountability while agents take high-volume work.
Co-founder Niket Vaidya, the CEO, framed the thesis in the announcement. "Every enterprise can now get access to powerful AI," he said. "The value comes when it runs inside the systems that run the business, under the company's own rules, and gets better every week." Vibhore Kumar is co-founder and CTO.
What Has the Company Shown So Far?
The company reports three years of deployments in regulated sectors, chiefly financial services, telecommunications and retail. It says some enterprise deployments now automate more than 90% of customer-facing interactions. It also claims up to a 50% reduction in time on complex data modernisation projects.
It did not name customers or publish revenue. "More than doubled annually" over three years is a growth rate without a base, and with no named clients the performance figures cannot be checked independently. A first outside round after three years of that growth suggests the business funded itself through services income, which is typical of firms with engineers on client sites.
Why Did Jungle Ventures Back It?
Jungle Ventures backed OneByZero because it sees a company already shipping production AI in a market where many peers are still running pilots. Managing Partner Yash Sankrityayan said OneByZero "stood out because it is already doing what much of the enterprise AI market is still talking about."
The investor logic also fits Jungle's regional focus. Banks, telcos and retailers in Southeast Asia and India run fragmented, older systems. They answer to regulators in several jurisdictions and operate in many languages. A vendor with local engineers and a governance record is easier to approve than a generic model provider. The round size is modest next to US enterprise AI raises, so the story rests on services-led growth rather than platform hype.
How Does the Business Model Cut Both Ways?
Forward-deployed engineering wins trust, but it limits margins and speed. Each client needs people on site, and headcount grows with revenue. The investment case depends on NEO absorbing more of the repeat work over time, so that each new deployment needs fewer bespoke hours.
That is the central test for the Series A. Governance tooling for agents is becoming a crowded category, with large cloud vendors and specialist startups all offering audit trails and approval controls. OneByZero's edge is that it already sits inside client systems, which makes it hard to dislodge. The risk is that it ends up as a consultancy with a dashboard.
Where Will the Money Go?
The company will expand engineering teams in its nine existing markets: Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the US and Vietnam. Japan is the new entry, with a local team planned. New sectors on the list include healthcare, conglomerates and the public sector.
Japan is a demanding choice. Enterprise buyers there favor long procurement cycles and strict internal controls, which suits a governance-first pitch but slows revenue. Healthcare and public sector work add compliance load on top of that.
Outlook
OneByZero enters its next phase with $20M, one named lead investor and no disclosed valuation. The next measurable signals are named customers, margin on services versus platform revenue, and how fast the Japan team lands its first contract. If NEO proves it can carry deployments without proportional engineering hours, the Series A looks like a bet on a durable control layer. If it cannot, the company stays a high-quality services firm, which is a smaller outcome.
