Andrei Craciunescu’s Bet On American Startups

A German risk expert left a top brokerage to build an AI-native insurance firm for venture-backed startups

Many venture-backed startups don’t consider insurance until something forces the issue, such as a customer asking for a certificate of insurance (COI), a vendor requiring specific coverage, or an investor expecting documentation before a fundraising round closes. By then, the clock is already ticking.

The bottleneck rarely occurs with the insurance carriers, which are increasingly willing to cover modern businesses. Rather, too few brokers understand emerging business models well enough to move quickly.

Andrei Craciunescu spent nearly a decade inside that system, advising CEOs and CFOs in big enterprises, before deciding to redirect his expertise toward the companies that were underserved. Drawing on that background, he built RiskCube, an AI-native insurance brokerage for startups and high-growth businesses that need to become vendor-ready quickly, compare coverage options efficiently, and meet vendor insurance requirements without slowing down revenue.

RiskCube believes insurance should not be a back-office blocker. For startups selling to larger customers, insurance should help the business move faster through procurement, onboarding, and contract requirements.

Tackling An Insurance Gap Hidden In Plain Sight

Craciunescu entered the insurance industry in 2017 and eventually worked across all three of its major pillars: insurers, reinsurers, and brokers. He got his start at one of the world’s largest brokerages, where he was embedded in the risk and analytics department and spent nearly five years advising CFOs on how to measure and manage their exposure.

The work gave him an unusual vantage point. Most insurance professionals spend their entire careers on one side of the business. Craciunescu saw how risk moved through the entire system and where it broke down.

“After talking to hundreds of CFOs and working in this department for almost five years, I realized there is a gap,” he says. “The traditional broker isn’t as well versed in risk management as you might expect. They’re very focused on transacting insurance.”

The analytical talent, he noticed, stayed locked inside insurers and reinsurers, where it helped underwrite policies but never reached the clients who needed guidance most. Brokers, incentivized by commission structures tied to premium size, directed their best people toward the largest accounts. Big multinational companies received white-glove service, while a seed-stage startup might get only a junior account manager and a quote.

“The best brokers in the world are working for the biggest companies in the world,” Craciunescu says. “That’s where all the expertise is going. But no expertise is going to the companies that really need it as they become established.”

Those companies — often in the software, AI, fintech, and space sectors — are the ones that grow fastest and require the right coverage, documentation, and broker support to satisfy larger customers.

RiskCube sees its role as part of a larger mission: helping build the risk infrastructure for the next generation of companies, from the industries reshaping Earth to the ones expanding toward the Moon and beyond.

However, Craciunescu identified that the challenges ran deeper as traditional brokers rely on historical benchmarks to assess risk and recommend coverage. Established industries fit those benchmarks well. Innovative companies often do not, and a broker who cannot model an unfamiliar business model cannot guide it confidently.

Moving To The U.S.

When he decided to build a company that would redirect that expertise toward startups, Craciunescu discovered that breaking into the American insurance market as an outsider came with significant regulatory hurdles.

As a non-U.S. citizen, he needed to pass California’s Property and Casualty (P&C) exam and the state’s Life and Health Insurance exam. One requirement caught him off guard: he could not obtain his broker license without a California driver’s license for ID verification, which meant retaking driving tests despite holding a valid German license for years.

With each requirement, Craciunescu focused on the brokerage process as much as he did on the other priorities of building his company. “I studied for these requirements as much as I did the tech and business side of my project,” he recalls. “And with every step I took, I felt myself getting closer to actually achieving it.”

Designing The Business Model For RiskCube

Craciunescu originally planned to build enterprise software: a risk-quantification tool for in-house risk and insurance teams to identify their risk exposure.

But the market pushed back from both sides. Many corporate risk teams assumed that level of analysis should come from their broker, not from a separate software platform. Brokers, for their part, had little reason to adopt tools that might help lower client premiums because lower premiums often reduced their commissions.

What Craciunescu kept hearing from founders was the same story: insurance had not crossed their minds until a customer asked for documentation or a deal stalled while waiting for a COI. They did not need a better way to evaluate their broker. They needed someone who could move quickly.

Additionally, while RiskCube could calculate risk exposure, founders inevitably asked what they should do with the information. Without a license, Craciunescu was legally prohibited from recommending specific products, solving only half the equation.

So, he became the broker. Instead of selling analytics to brokers who did not want them, he used the analytics himself, and that technology became a competitive advantage.

RiskCube allows businesses to compare quotes across the market through a single intake form, without the traditional, back-and-forth brokerage workflows. Where a legacy broker reaches for the closest historical benchmark, Craciunescu’s platform quantifies the specific exposures a modern company faces, simulates risk scenarios, and matches clients with carriers that are actually equipped to cover them.

That combination of transparency, comparison, and analytical depth is something Craciunescu believes traditional brokerage models were not designed to deliver, built as they are for large accounts rather than the speed and workflow demands of modern startups. “We can analyze and recommend the risk, but if we’re not a broker, we can’t place the coverage,” Craciunescu explains. “So, we combine both by using AI to evaluate policies and then placing the right one directly through our brokerage.”

Validating His Vision

After 10 months of exams, applications, and regulatory filings, Craciunescu closed his first transaction. The commission was modest, but the deal saved the customer a significant amount compared with other quotes on the market. For someone who had spent his entire career inside corporate structures, the moment carried unexpected weight. It was the first time he had ever earned money directly from his own work.

For the companies RiskCube serves, that kind of support is not just about buying a policy. It is about getting the right coverage in place quickly enough to keep sales conversations, procurement reviews, M&A deals, and onboarding processes moving.

“The first transaction was not only a validation of my vision, but it was also the first time I made money by myself,” Craciunescu says. “I always worked in corporate, but I never saw how money got into my bank account. So, this was one of the best moments of this whole experience so far.”

RiskCube has since completed a program with a major startup accelerator and started selling insurance to other venture-backed startups, many of them with around $3 million in funding as reported by Craciunescu. Following the initial launch phase, he is looking forward to expanding availability to the public in May 2026.

Andrei Craciunescu’s path from analyst to San Francisco broker was not the obvious move for someone with a doctorate in progress and a stable position inside one of the world’s largest insurance firms. But he identified a real gap in the market: high-growth companies do not just need insurance; they need a faster, clearer way to meet customer requirements, generate the right documentation, and become vendor-ready without losing momentum.

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