Stand, a San Francisco home insurer that prices disaster risk by simulating how individual houses would behave in a fire, has raised a $70 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation, the company announced Oct. 15, 2026. Saga Ventures led the round, with participation from Lowercarbon, Eclipse, Equal Ventures, Inspired Capital, Neotribe and Jackson Square Ventures, among others.
The headline number for agents and homeowners in fire country is the growth rate. Stand says it now insures more than $10 billion of property, up from $1 billion a year ago, a tenfold increase over a period when, as the company puts it, insurance for many homeowners has become “expensive, hard to find, and unpredictable.”
How the model works
Conventional homeowners insurance is priced largely from historical loss data. Stand’s pitch, as laid out in the release, is that history is the wrong guide when disasters are getting larger and more frequent; the company says a billion-dollar weather disaster now strikes the U.S. every 10 days. Instead, what it calls the Stand World Model builds a digital representation of each home and simulates how it would perform under fire, wind and other hazards, accounting for construction, surroundings and local weather.
That simulation drives the underwriting in three steps, the company says. Stand identifies what makes a specific home vulnerable and the most cost-effective fixes, then helps the owner get the work done by guiding each step, connecting them with what it calls trusted partners and confirming the completed improvements. Homes that are made resilient get discounts of up to 70%, according to Stand, along with what it describes as stable pricing and coverage over time.
“Disasters follow the laws of physics, and insurance should too,” said Dan Preston, Stand’s co-founder and CEO. “If your home is resilient, you should be rewarded with a low premium and never have to worry about losing your coverage.”
Stand is not itself the insurance company of record. It underwrites and services policies issued by Concert Specialty Insurance Company, rated A- by AM Best, in California, and by Stand Insurance Exchange, rated A by Demotech, in Florida. The release lists Arch, RenaissanceRe, Hannover, Nephila and Hiscox among its reinsurers.
Two hires from the insurance establishment
Alongside the round, Stand named two senior executives. Drew Saad joins as president of property and casualty from PURE Insurance, where he was chief underwriting officer for the high-net-worth insurer. Tony Landi becomes chief financial officer after serving as head of strategic growth at Nephila, which Stand describes as one of the world’s largest fund managers of catastrophe reinsurance; he earlier led reinsurance and capital management at Openly and portfolio management at Everest Re.
Landi will oversee finance, reinsurance, capital markets and growth strategy. “My job is to make sure that as Stand grows, the capital is there to support it, from our investors and our reinsurance partners alike,” he said in the release. Saad said the opportunity “now is to build an insurance operation that matches” the science “and scales it to every market that needs it.”
Why it matters for housing
Insurance availability has become a central issue for housing markets in disaster-prone states. California lawmakers and regulators have spent much of the year reworking the state’s home-insurance rules, including the package Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed, and recent data from Cotality put the value of Western U.S. properties threatened by wildfire risk at $1.4 trillion. Lenders require hazard insurance, so when a buyer cannot secure a policy, the mortgage cannot close.
Stand’s approach ties price to work done on the house rather than to the ZIP code alone, which, if it holds up through a severe fire season, would give owners a concrete path to lower premiums. That remains the company’s claim to prove: a $10 billion book is still small against the scale of exposure, and the release does not disclose loss experience or premium volume. The new capital, two executives with deep reinsurance and underwriting backgrounds, and a fresh unicorn valuation suggest investors are betting it can scale. More coverage of insurers and property technology is in our Technology & AI section.
