Four founders, four starting points
Four founders.
Four starting points.
Four rounds reported between 21 October and 9 November 2026, each tied to a founder the source describes: a 19-year-old, a former minister, a Veriff co-founder and a former intelligence operator. Amounts are in the currency each source uses.
- Chaos, London: £1M pre-seed led by Bridford Group, with Amuse and music-industry operators, reported on 21 October by BusinessCloud. The founder, Ruhan Verma, is 19. BusinessCloud calls Chaos "the first operating system for music", with a six-person team across London and New York. The money is for expansion across the UK and the US. BusinessCloud says the public launch was due in October.
- i23 Group, London: seed of £4.9M led jointly by Four Cities Capital, with Outward VC, Seedcamp and Insiders Ventures, reported on 29 October by Tech.eu. Tech.eu cites Sky News for £4.9M and uses £5M in its headline. The founder, Bim Afolami, was economic secretary to the Treasury from 2023 to 2024; co-founder Anand Sambasivan co-founded PrimaryBid. i23 Group is building an AI-native insurance broker. Tech.eu gives no use of funds.
- Roleo: €2.9M led by Practica Capital, with Inventure and backers including Bolt founder Markus Villig, reported on 2 November by Tech.eu. The CEO, Janer Gorohhov, co-founded Veriff. Roleo is a free AI career agent for tech professionals. The money is for improving the agent, extending it beyond job matching and starting European expansion. Tech.eu names no round stage and no country.
- Crowd Threat, Newcastle: £1M from the North East Accelerate Fund, managed by Mercia Ventures, and from NPIF II, managed by PXN Ventures, reported on 9 November by Tech.eu. The split between the two is not disclosed, and no round stage is given. The founder, Michael McCabe, spent more than two decades in intelligence with the British military and private security companies, and founded Intelligence Fusion, which Sigma7 acquired in 2022. Crowd Threat runs a crowdsourced threat intelligence platform. The money is for product development, wider coverage in Africa, South America and Asia, and seven new jobs.
Two of the four sources name a round stage: Chaos (pre-seed) and i23 Group (seed). The sources for Roleo and Crowd Threat do not. Chaos and Crowd Threat are the smallest rounds, both £1M.