Sherpa, an early-stage enterprise software company, has raised $2.2 million in pre-seed funding to build an AI operating system for external workforce orchestration. The round, backed by Seedcamp, DN Capital, Activant and Brighteye alongside operator angels, targets a $6.8 trillion market where enterprises increasingly depend on contractors, suppliers and AI agents-yet manage them with fragmented legacy tools.
The fragmented state of external workforce management
External work has become the dominant mode of enterprise execution, but the software stack hasn't kept pace. Most organizations still rely on legacy vendor management systems, spreadsheets and outsourced managed service providers that operate in silos. These tools provide no unified orchestration, governance or visibility across the full external workforce. As AI agents begin entering enterprise workflows alongside human contractors and suppliers, the gap multiplies. Companies now need to orchestrate across human and AI workers simultaneously, with no single platform to do it.
Orchestrating intent to execution
Sherpa's platform treats every engagement as an intent-something that needs doing-and routes it from that point. "Every engagement begins as intent-something that needs doing," the company said. "sherpa orchestrates it from that point: routing work down the right path whether it belongs to an internal team, an external contractor or an AI agent, then scoping the engagement, governing it and processing payment, all within a single platform and a single source of truth."
The company is starting with the external workforce segment, a $14 billion-plus software market it sees as the sharpest point of pain. The pre-seed capital will build the core team and bring the first enterprise deployments to life. Investors are betting that orchestration-connecting intent to execution across internal, external and AI workers-represents the next structural layer of enterprise software, similar to how ERP unified internal operations or CRM unified customer relationships.
Why this matters for operations
For operations managers, Sherpa's approach signals a shift toward treating all work execution as an orchestration problem, regardless of whether a human or an AI agent performs the task. Managing a blended workforce from a single source of truth reduces governance risk and speeds up how work gets routed and completed. Understanding how AI can orchestrate workflows across these categories is becoming a core operations competency. Our AI for Operations resources cover these shifts. Operations managers can build practical skills for this new environment with the AI Learning Path for Operations Managers.
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