NationGraph Raises $18M to Bring AI to Government Contracting

NationGraph, a Canadian-founded AI startup, raised $18 million in Series A funding led by Menlo Ventures to build an intelligence platform that makes government procurement data accessible at scale — a problem that has vexed small and mid-size vendors for decades.

Cracking the Procurement Black Box

Government contracting in the United States spans more than 110,000 agencies — municipalities, counties, school districts, and special districts — each with different budget cycles, purchasing processes, and data formats. NationGraph uses large language models to consolidate purchasing data from meeting minutes, budget documents, RFPs, and freedom-of-information requests into a single searchable platform.

"Information on purchases is hard to find, often inaccurate and outdated, and hard to use at scale," said co-founder and CTO Eden Ding, formerly a quantitative developer at Citadel.

CEO Kimia Hamidi, previously head of savings at corporate spend platform Ramp, plans to use the capital to expand engineering, strengthen the platform's signals engine, and add Canadian government data based on customer demand.

$22.5M Total and Growing Fast

The Series A brings NationGraph's total funding to $22.5 million, with participation from Perplexity's Fund, XYZ Venture Capital, and Reach Capital. The 20-person team operates from offices in San Francisco, Toronto, and Miami.

"We're proud to lead NationGraph's Series A as they bring transparency to the broken process of government procurement," said Menlo Ventures partner Croom Beatty.

Why SBIR Companies Should Pay Attention

For small businesses navigating federal and state procurement, the barrier is rarely the quality of the product — it is knowing which agencies are buying and when. NationGraph's approach has direct relevance for SBIR/STTR companies transitioning from Phase II to Phase III commercialization, where identifying government customers is the critical gap between successful R&D and sustained revenue.

The broader trend of AI tools entering the government contracting space reflects growing demand for procurement transparency. Grant seekers tracking the intersection of AI and public-sector opportunity can find more analysis on the Granted blog.