Mike Vichich, a former consumer‑tech founder who sold a company to Olo for $200 million, teamed with engineer Brandon Max to tackle the notoriously opaque government‑contract market. In 2023 they launched Pursuit, a platform that scours data from roughly 11,000 state, local, education (SLED) entities to surface buying signals for private firms in the US market.

On Wednesday, Pursuit closed a $22 million seed round led by Mike Rosengarten, co‑founder of OpenGov, bringing total funding to $25.5 million. Backers also include Jack Altman of Alt Capital, venture legend Bill Gurley and Sam Hinkie of 87 Capital, signaling confidence in the company’s AI‑driven data‑fusion approach for public sector procurement efficiency and growth in 2026.

Pursuit’s engine parses open government data—budgets, contract registers, FOIA requests—from every state, county, city, and school district, converting fragmented PDFs into structured insights. The platform then ranks SLED agencies most likely to purchase a client’s services within a year, using signals such as budget size, current challenges, and decision‑maker identity for their bid efforts today.

By turning buried public data into actionable opportunities, Pursuit aims to democratize access to government contracts, a market worth trillions. The company’s AI clone model promises firms a real‑time view of every possible buyer, potentially reshaping how private enterprises engage with the public sector and driving higher win rates for bidders in 2026 and beyond.