Apptio Co-Founders Reunite to Launch Enterprise AI Startup Thira with $21M in Funding Led by Madrona

Apptio co-founders reunite to launch enterprise AI startup Thira with $21M in funding led by Madrona

Apptio co-founders Sunny Gupta and Kurt Shintaffer launched Thira, a Bellevue-based enterprise AI startup, with $21 million in seed funding led by Madrona. Thira is building AI agents to autonomously handle IT support tickets and other back-office work at large companies.

Thira Raises $21 Million Seed Round Led by Madrona to Build the Back-Office That Runs Itself

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 14, 2026-

What makes CIOs trust an AI agent? Thira bets it's not the model.

Sunny Gupta spent a decade and a half building Apptio into the system of record for enterprise technology spend. His next company is a bet that CIOs now want to act on that spend, not just measure it — and that the models are now up to the job. Gupta and Apptio co-founder Kurt Shintaffer are building Thira, an agentic “system of execution” for the enterprise back-office, starting with IT. Ten enterprises have already signed on as unpaid design p…

Why We Invested in Thira: Partnering Again with Sunny Gupta and Kurt Shintaffer, on the Biggest Opportunity Yet

Rarely in life do great people, customer needs, and opportunities for innovation come together at the perfect moment. The formation of Thira and Madrona’s commitment to partnering again with Sunny Gupta, Kurt Shintaffer, and an incredible team is one of those moments. Sunny and I met 25 years ago and have now worked closely together in one form or another on six different companies. Most notably, we started working respectively on iConclude and …