Ordinal completes $1 million seed round, looks to scale
by August 28, 2025 12:33 pm 1,239 views
Ordinal, a Bentonville-based startup that offers artificial intelligence (AI) research assistants for governmental agencies, has secured a $1 million seed round led by Plains Ventures, the company announced Thursday (Aug. 28).
Other seed round participants include Winrock International and The Venture Center Arkansas Fund. The money will be used to bring its technology to more cities across the United States, according to the release. In Arkansas, Ordinal’s technology platform is operating in Benton County, Lowell and Pea Ridge.
The platform allows city staff to quickly find answers from internal documents, such as codes, ordinances and meeting minutes, using a retrieval-augmented (RAG) model. Unlike generic AI tools, Ordinal’s platform “grounds every answer in the municipality’s own records and links back to the source, ensuring accuracy and consistency,” according to the release.
“Most government employees spend about a third of their work week retrieving information, often navigating multiple sources and even people,” said Jacob Herrington, co-founder of Ordinal. “Ordinal makes that process fast, reliable and secure. Our goal is simple: help governments and their communities work better together. With this funding, we’re scaling to bring our technology to more cities across the U.S., giving civic servants an easy entry point into AI.”
With the seed round money, the company plans to expand its customer base, refine its public-facing chatbot, and build additional features to help governmental agencies “work smarter,” the release shows. Along with the Arkansas cities and county, Ordinal’s platform is also operating in Decatur, Ind.; La Quinta, Calif.; Sallisaw, Okla.; and Willard, Mo.
Ordinal was founded by Jacob Herrington, Nick Spinazze and Jacob Eubanks, a team of engineers and product leaders with experience at global technology companies. It’s based at Onward HQ in Bentonville, where the team connected with Plains Ventures during a VC Immersions event hosted by the Northwest Arkansas Council. The network of founders, investors and organizations helped Ordinal and allowed the company to scale nationally while remaining in Arkansas.
“Ordinal’s product is intuitive and immediately valuable to governments,” said Matt Hickman, principal partner at Plains Ventures. “Equally important, the founding team has the technical expertise, vision and ambition to redefine how municipalities operate.”
Ordinal has 12 employees, including eight in Northwest Arkansas.