The round was led by CRV, with participation from Pear VC, Y Combinator, SV Angel, Liquid2, Uncorrelated Ventures, and a network of strategic angels including Paul Graham, Rich Miner, Mark Pincus, Steve Blank, and Mati Staniszewski. This brings SalesPatriot’s total funding to $6.3 million to date.
Founded in 2024 by engineers Nelson Ray, Benjamin Rhodes-Kropf, and Maciej Szymczyk, SalesPatriot was born out of frustration with outdated procurement systems. Ray and Szymczyk both studied at the University of California, Berkeley, while Rhodes-Kropf conducted AI research at MIT before joining the founding team – all sharing a deeply technical foundation.
Ray experienced the inefficiencies firsthand while working at Aurora Defense Group. Rhodes-Kropf brought deep expertise in AI and systems engineering, while Szymczyk focused on scaling teams and tapping into European talent. Together, they set out to modernize defense supply chains at a time when global security depends on speed, resilience, and better logistics.
SalesPatriot solves this by ingesting and structuring data from government portals, ERP systems, spreadsheets, and even unstructured email communications. Its dynamic workflows automate quote processing and order management, enabling suppliers to process orders 7x faster. This is powering teams servicing Pentagon orders worth more than $200 million annually.
In just over a year since inception, SalesPatriot has secured contracts with leading defense parts distributors including Jamaica Bearings Group, AllClear Aerospace, and STATZ Corporation.
For distributors and manufacturers, the platform delivers faster access to contracts, fewer manual errors, and the capacity to handle more business without adding headcount. For the DoD and its suppliers, it brings speed, accuracy, and resilience across the supply chain.
“Our vision is to become the default system of record for defense procurement – and eventually, all critical supply chains,” says Nelson Ray, CEO of SalesPatriot. “Wars today are won with logistics and supply chains as much as with new platforms. We’re building the infrastructure to make sure the West is ready.”
“We built SalesPatriot from day one to integrate with the messy reality of defense procurement – combining AI, structured data, unstructured communication, and legacy systems,” says Benjamin Rhodes-Kropf, CTO and co-founder of SalesPatriot. “Our workflows don’t force users to change how they work – they remove the manual overhead. That’s why our customers are already seeing 7x faster turnaround times and winning more Pentagon business.”
The company currently employs 10 team members across engineering and business development, with plans to grow to 12-15 by the end of 2025. New hires will focus on full-stack development and scaling commercial operations.
Alongside its U.S. operations, SalesPatriot has opened the SalesPatriot House in Warsaw to tap into Poland’s engineering talent and build a launchpad for international growth.
“Poland is full of world-class engineers who are eager to work on meaningful challenges,” says Maciej Szymczyk, co-founder of SalesPatriot. “With SalesPatriot House, we’re giving them the opportunity to build mission-critical technology side by side with our U.S. team. This is just the beginning – we plan to grow our team here significantly and make Poland a key driver of our global expansion.”
At SalesPatriot House, engineers live and work alongside the team, focused on two things: shipping world-class code and making customers happy. The company supports hires with housing and food, and offers a relocation path to join the team in San Francisco as SalesPatriot expands globally.
Over the next 12-18 months, SalesPatriot plans to dominate the defense sector, expand into commercial aviation, and begin entering European and Asian procurement markets. Long-term, the company aims to become the trusted infrastructure layer for all mission-critical supply chains – from aerospace to energy.
“The ability to build, source, and produce, efficiently and domestically, is what sustains American competitiveness,” says Caitlin Bolnick Rellas, General Partner at CRV. “SalesPatriot understands that, and they’re building the modern procurement engine for the next generation of defense manufacturers. We couldn’t be prouder to be in business with this team.”
“SalesPatriot is what great talent looks like in action: deep problem insight, a relentless shipping culture, and an obsession with customer workflows,” says Bartek Pucek, investor in SalesPatriot. “They turned a messy, mission-critical problem into software that accelerates real defense businesses. Wars are won with logistics; logistics today are won with software.”
