One day this happened.
Jeanne Gammage was working as a technology consultant with the Small Business Administration, helping companies gain access to capital through traditional lenders such as banks and credit unions. However, she couldn’t stop thinking that there was a problem: the ways lenders and businesses were connecting had become extremely outdated, especially on the technology front.
“I was inside the mess, watching good businesses die, while trying to navigate legacy workflows,” she told TechCrunch. “My literal job was to find technology to solve it, and it didn’t exist. I couldn’t find anything.”
So she called up an old friend, Alaia Martin, and the two got to work. In 2022, the two began working on Cyphr, a Kansas City-based company focused on making the loan process easier for lenders and small businesses. Cypher is a top 20 finalist in Startup Battlefield, part of TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
The product analyzes alternative data sources and the financial patterns of small businesses to help lenders make decisions about small business creditworthiness. Cypher went through a few iterations since its launch, but recent advances in artificial intelligence paved the way for what the product is today. It was officially launched in the market in April 2024.
“When we started, the problem we were trying to solve was, ‘How can we make underwriting smarter and faster, so these entrepreneurs can get access to capital?’” said Gammage, CEO. “We wanted a world where money moved as freely as it did in other sectors. We came up with a borrower-centric experience, whereas a lot of companies were focused on ‘how do we make this work for lenders.'”
He began building the LLM using training data based on neglected business owners and their company’s financial situation to help lenders decide which companies to partner with.
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“We were doing it manually,” Martin, the company’s COO, said of building LLMs before the latest AI upgrades. “Even though we are an AI native company, we started doing this without really anyone’s help.”
Their current model is on top of the OpenAI model, which they fine-tuned themselves.
However, the latest updates in AI did more than boost their product — it made lenders more willing to work with them, Gammage said. The financial industry was already changing due to Covid, knowing that they needed to digitize and modernize in some ways. “Now you add AI to it, where they are using it on a daily basis, it feels comfortable,” she said.
“If we (went to the market) in 2022, it would certainly be a lot harder to buy because of the fear of technology and AI and the status quo,” Gammage said.
The company has raised one million dollars so far. Gammage said the process was easy and difficult at the same time.
He said, “Things I thought would be hard, weren’t hard. Things I thought would be straight forward, weren’t hard at all.” A sad part was how the capital flowed: They watched their peers raise millions at once, while for them, the money came in installments as they participated in accelerators and various pitch competitions.
“It’s very difficult to have catalytic moments when you’re getting your cash injection like this,” he said.
Meanwhile, Martin was worried about what it would be like to fundraise in San Francisco as two black women with non-tech backgrounds from the Midwest. “We’re not what you think of when you think of a tech founder,” he said. But he said that he does not have any special problem. “We were really well received in Silicon Valley.”
“I’m very grateful that we were able to muster it because I know less than 1% of us can say that,” Gammage said.
The company has big plans: It’s currently building a platform to help companies find opportunities when the World Cup arrives next year. Gammage and Martin have also thought about new locations for the company, although nothing has been finalized.
“We’re excited about the future of the company,” Gammage said, adding that he hopes Disrupt’s winning Battlefield will help accomplish these goals. “Even speed requires money.”
If you want to learn more about Cypher from the company itself — as well as check out dozens of others, hear their pitches, and hear from guest speakers on four different stages — join us at Disrupt October 27 to 29 in San Francisco. Learn more here.
