Dallas-based Bestow has formed a dedicated team called Bestow Labs to build AI-native products for life insurance and annuity carriers, deliberately separating that work from the production systems its clients depend on.

Chad Hersh, who joined Bestow as head of AI solutions from Amazon, is leading the group’s first product. Hersh led global life insurance market development at AWS, and he’s worked on technology transformation across the insurance landscape. The company is not yet disclosing details about the product but said it is targeting release later this year.

Co-founder and CEO Melbourne O’Banion said in an interview with Dallas Innovates that the separate structure of Bestow Labs is crucial. Insurance is heavily regulated, and Bestow’s carrier-facing infrastructure has to stay stable and compliant.

“Separating Labs from production gives our team a sandbox to experiment with AI-native approaches, take bigger swings, and move fast, without any of that risk touching carrier-facing systems,” O’Banion said. “Nothing graduates out of Labs until it’s proven out. That separation is what lets us be ambitious on the innovation side while staying dependable on the production side, so carriers get the best of both.”

What carriers are asking for

O’Banion said the idea for Bestow Labs came out of a pattern in customer conversations.

“Many carriers are after the same thing: they want to move at the speed the market demands, but they’re boxed in by legacy infrastructure,” he said. “Modernization is the top priority we hear across the industry, and customers repeatedly tell us the real barrier isn’t ambition, it’s fragmented data and systems.”

That echoes Deloitte’s 2026 Global Insurance Outlook, which identifies legacy systems as a continuing top focus area for insurers and points to fragmented data and outdated infrastructure as barriers to scaling AI.

“Carriers shouldn’t have to choose between innovating and re-platforming,” O’Banion said. “Bestow Labs was built to solve that gap, giving carriers access to AI-native capabilities that weren’t even possible a year ago.”

Bestow didn’t disclose the size of the Labs team, but O’Banion said the company is investing significantly and growing the team quickly. It is distributed nationally with a strong base in Dallas.

North Texas growth

Bestow has been in Dallas since its founding in 2017. At the time, the company launched a fully digital term life product in Texas that let consumers buy coverage in about five minutes without a medical exam. It raised $15 million in Series A funding in 2018 and expanded to 32 states within three months. A $50 million Series B came in 2020, and a $70 million Series C followed later that year.

The business has since shifted from selling policies directly to selling infrastructure to the carriers that do. In May 2025, the company closed a $120 million oversubscribed Series D co-led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives and Smith Point Capital, along with a $50 million credit facility from TriplePoint Capital.

Bestow now supports carriers across the policy lifecycle, from digital new business through policy administration. The company says its carrier clients include Nationwide, Transamerica, USAA, Sammons Financial Group and Equitable.

Don’t miss what’s next. Subscribe to Dallas Innovates.

Track Dallas-Fort Worth’s business and innovation landscape with our curated news in your inbox Tuesday-Thursday.