Thira

Thira is an enterprise AI startup creating a secure, self-learning system of execution to automate back-office operations. The company was founded in 2026 by Sunny Gupta and Kurt Shintaffer, the successful co-founders of Apptio, a Technology Business Management (TBM) firm that was acquired by IBM for $4.6 billion. Gupta, serving as Executive Chairman, and Shintaffer are reuniting their entrepreneurial expertise, having previously founded iConclude (sold to Opsware) and Apptio together. The broader founding team includes seasoned executives from Atlassian, Oracle, Databricks, and AIVOT, combining proven enterprise leadership with AI-native talent. Launched in July 2026 with a significant $21 million seed funding round led by Madrona and with participation from FUSE, Thira aims to build a "back-office that runs itself." The company's initial focus is on automating enterprise IT support processes. Its platform uses AI agents designed to handle complex, cross-system workflows autonomously, such as resolving IT tickets, managing new hire setups, or processing software purchase approvals. Thira's technology is designed to integrate with and operate across a multitude of existing enterprise systems like ServiceNow and Jira Service Management. It combines self-learning agents, an enterprise knowledge graph, and robust security and governance to execute tasks rather than just providing insights. Thira's business model targets large enterprises, leveraging the founders' extensive relationships with CIOs and senior IT leaders, cultivated through their work at Apptio and the TBM Council they established. The company is entering a competitive market but differentiates by focusing on the agentic execution of complex tasks across disparate systems, a gap often left by incumbent platforms. With ten enterprise design partners already collaborating ahead of a planned launch in the fall of 2026, Thira is positioning itself to capture a share of the estimated $6.3 trillion annual global IT spend by reducing manual, repetitive operational work. Keywords: agentic AI, back-office automation, enterprise AI, IT process automation, AI agents, self-learning systems, enterprise software, workflow automation, system of execution, Sunny Gupta, Kurt Shintaffer, Madrona, IT support automation, CIO tools, enterprise knowledge graph, AI governance, cross-system integration, operational efficiency, IT ticket resolution, FinOps