Latest news with #GradientLabs
Business Insider
29-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
This pitch deck helped Gradient Labs, a London AI startup, raise a $13 million Series A funding round in one week
Gradient Labs, a London-based AI startup building customer operations AI agents for fintech companies, said it closed a $13 million funding round in one week, Business Insider has learned exclusively. The Series A round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from LocalGlobe, Puzzle Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Exceptional Capital. Gradient Labs was co-founded in 2023 by Dimitri Masin, Neal Lathia, and Danai Antoniou — all early employees of Monzo, a challenger bank based in London. BI asked Masin, who is CEO, how he was able to close so quickly and what his advice is for other founders who are trying to fundraise. He answered questions via email and also shared his pitch deck. It might look like it happened overnight, but the groundwork was laid months in advance. We'd been building relationships with investors early — sharing updates, listening to feedback, and staying in touch even when we weren't actively fundraising. So when we officially opened the round, we weren't just another cold pitch. We also came in with a strong foundation: the product was live, the traction was real, and the space we're focused on — AI for customer ops in regulated industries — is very specific and very painful. That specificity helped us stand out in a sea of generic AI pitches. And we were prepared: deck, memo, model — everything was ready to go. That made it easy for interested investors to move quickly. There's no silver bullet. A pitch deck can't make up for weak fundamentals. What helped was clarity: We didn't try to tell an overly broad story. We showed exactly why this problem matters, why we're uniquely qualified to solve it, and how the product is already delivering results. And it was delivering: We reached $1 million in annual recurring revenue in just the first 4 months. We also made sure to point out that we weren't riding the AI hype, but we leaned into specifics, such as traction metrics, real use cases, and product performance. Investors could see that we weren't just chasing a trend. We were building something that works today, and has the potential to reshape customer operations in industries that don't tolerate guesswork. Be brutally honest about your fundamentals. Is the product genuinely good? Is your team equipped to win in this space? Will what you're building still matter when the next big model drops? If not, a clever deck won't save you. Also, don't wait to build investor relationships. Start early, even before you need the money. When you finally do raise, it won't feel like a scramble. And finally, know your space inside out. Founder-market fit is what lets you move fast with conviction. I spent years building machine learning systems for fraud at Monzo — that gave me a real advantage in knowing what regulated companies actually need, and how to deliver it safely. That context is hard to fake. Here is Gradient Labs' series A pitch deck:
Finextra
08-07-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Former Monzo alumni raise $13 million for AI chatbot startup
Gradient Labs, a startup creating AI agents for the financial services industry and founded by former Monzo alumni, has raised $13 million. 1 The Series A funding was led by by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Exceptional Capital, Liquid 2, LocalGlobe, and Puzzle Ventures. The firm was co-founded by former Monzo alumni, Dimitri Masin, who led the data team at the neobank, alongside chief scientist Danai Antoniou and the man behind Monzo's machine-learing infrastructure, Neal Lathia. The firm launched Otto, its first AI agent, in November. The chatbot hadles complex customer queries, and is capable of accurately identifying vulnerable customers, detecting complaints, and avoiding pitfalls such as giving unauthorized financial advice or tipping off. Customers already onboarded include Plum, Zego, Lendable, Yonder, Nala, Sling, and the "first live autonomous AI customer support for a large regulated bank". The company says customers reach 40-60% auto-resolution rates within days without any custom integrations. "Our AI agent consistently achieves higher Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores than our partners' best human agents," boasts Masin. "In every deployment, our AI doesn't just match the performance of existing customer service teams; it consistently surpasses them, often achieving higher CSAT scores than even the best human agents." He says the funds will be used to train its AI agents on the complex decision-making required in money laundering investigations, technical troubleshooting, and nuanced compliance scenarios, and for expansion into the US.
