Owner, a company that builds and operates the technology stack for local businesses such as restaurants, gyms, and salons, announced a $240 million Series D round led by the growth equity arm of Goldman Sachs Alternatives, pushing its valuation to roughly $2.3 billion. Existing backers Meritech, Redpoint, Headline, and Jack Altman also participated. Founded in 2020, Owner has surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue by positioning itself as an all-in-one, AI-run back office for small businesses that cannot afford separate vendors for a website, online ordering, a mobile app, CRM, customer support, point-of-sale, and phone-based ordering. Rather than selling software that owners configure themselves, Owner frames its product as an AI CMO and CTO: autonomous agents monitor each piece of a client's stack and make changes such as adjusting menu pricing or running marketing campaigns without a human operator in the loop. For developers and technical operators, the raise signals where growth capital is flowing in 2026: not toward general-purpose foundation models, but toward vertical AI products that wrap agents around narrow, high-friction back-office workflows for underserved markets like local retail and hospitality, where technical talent is scarce and churn from juggling multiple SaaS subscriptions is high. It also illustrates a broader pattern of software vendors quietly becoming service providers, since Owner is compensated more like an outsourced ops team than a per-seat SaaS license, a model other vertical AI startups are likely to copy as investors reward revenue quality and retention over raw user counts.