Koch Disruptive Technologies, the venture arm of Koch Inc., has made a strategic investment in Emanate, a San Francisco–based startup building artificial intelligence for industrial sales, the company told Fortune exclusively. Neither side would disclose the size of the deal: Koch is privately held, and Emanate said it does not reveal investment amounts.

Koch, the second-largest private company in the United States, operates refineries, factories, and farm-to-market supply chains, along with software and logistics businesses. The company said it generates more than $125 billion in annual revenue and employs about 120,000 people in more than 50 countries. That footprint places the new investor inside the very industrial market Emanate’s software targets.

“While much of the conversation around AI has centered on efficiency and reduction, we believe some of the biggest opportunities lie in helping companies accelerate growth,” Jon Chisholm, managing director at Koch Disruptive Technologies, said in a statement.

The 20-year rep

In much of industrial America, a sale still begins with a spec sheet, an inbox, and a representative who has worked the account for 20 years. Emanate wants AI to do that job. Its bet is that speed wins: an industrial buyer can usually source the same part from multiple suppliers, so whoever answers first, with a sharper read on price, gets the order. The company says its software sits on top of the systems suppliers already use and pulls that scattered knowledge into one place.

“Doing nothing isn’t neutral in this market,” Emanate founder and CEO Kiara Nirghin said in a statement.

Fortune previously covered Emanate in February, when the company came out of stealth with backing from a16z, Peter Thiel, and Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian. Nirghin is a Thiel Fellow, a former Google Grand Prize winner, and the youngest board member of the Google Impact Fund.

“Before Emanate, customer accounts were handled per account, by whoever owned them, with whatever that person remembered and had time for,” Nirghin told Fortune in written responses. “Now they’re handled 24/7, with a full knowledge graph of every single interaction on the account.”

She does not call the product a chatbot or an agent. She calls it an engine. “You point it at a business metric, and the engine figures out the rest.”

Measuring the engine, earning autonomy

Emanate declined to name any customers, citing confidentiality agreements, and did not share revenue or margin figures for any client. In February, the company said its product could lift customer revenue by 60% to 80%. Until a customer is named or client-side numbers are disclosed, that figure rests entirely on the company’s own account.

Nirghin said Emanate measures results by giving the engine to one group of accounts and comparing it with the rest of the customer’s business over the same stretch. Both groups face the same prices and demand, so the gap should be the engine’s doing.

According to Nirghin, the engine can autonomously reactivate, manage, price, and expand accounts — but it does not start out that way. “Our model is earned autonomy,” she said. “The engine starts with a human in the loop and earns the right to act on its own, step by step, as it proves itself on an outcome.” That pricing authority is notable given Emanate’s own thesis: a sharper read on price often decides who gets the order.

Asked about the worst mistake the engine has made, Nirghin said there hasn’t been one. “Because autonomy is earned and we deploy incredibly intelligently, it has never happened,” she said.

Generative AI was used for research assistance and/or transcription for this article. The reporter independently reported and verified the factual claims, and a human editor reviewed the piece before publication. This report has been updated with regard to Emanate’s client companies, whose agreements with the startup are confidential.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.