knewit raises a pre-Series A round from KUSABI for AI agents that run trade and delivery operations

knewit raises a pre-Series A round from KUSABI for AI agents that run trade and delivery operations

29 September 2026 — knewit, a Tokyo company that automates order and delivery operations for trading companies and manufacturers, announced on 29 September 2026 that it has raised a pre-Series A round from its existing investor KUSABI. The company did not state the size of the round. It said its cumulative funding now stands at ¥290 million.

Not yet independently verified. knewit does not state the size of this round; the only figure it gives is its cumulative funding of ¥290 million, which includes earlier rounds. The company also announced a pre-Series A in 2024, so the stage label repeats. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

The round

According to knewit's release on PR TIMES, the money comes through a third-party allotment of new shares to KUSABI No. 1 Investment Limited Partnership. No other investors are named. The release gives cumulative funding of ¥290 million, not a figure for this round, so the round itself should be treated as undisclosed.

The company says it will use the funds to strengthen its product, including AI agent features and integrations, to expand its solution and operations capacity, to hire and train implementation staff, and for market development.

What the company does

knewit works on what it describes as the operational debt left in the work between procurement and delivery: the orders, confirmations and changes that still arrive as emails, faxes and PDFs at trading companies and manufacturers. Its AI agents read those documents and carry out the steps, while knewit's own operations staff handle exceptions, so the service combines software with outsourced processing. It connects to a customer's existing systems through CSV files or an API. The company says its focus for the coming financial year is the steel distribution sector.

Why it matters for buyers

Fax and PDF ordering remains common in Japanese B2B trade, and it is a large source of manual work for mid-sized distributors. A model that pairs AI agents with people who handle the exceptions is one way to automate it without asking every supplier and customer to change how they send orders. Buyers outside Japan with similar paper-heavy order flows will see more vendors offering this hybrid of software and outsourced operations.

What to check

• Which document types and layouts the agents handle without human help, and what share of orders typically goes to the exception team.
• Who is accountable for an error in a processed order: the software, knewit's staff, or you.
• How it writes into your systems, and whether that is only CSV or a live API connection.
• Where documents and order data are processed and stored, and by whom.
• How pricing splits between software and the human operations component.

Sources

• knewit via PR TIMES: knewit、PreシリーズAラウンドで資金調達（累計調達額2.9億円） — 29 September 2026
• The Bridge: knewit secures pre-Series A funding from KUSABI — 30 September 2026