The investment marks a significant moment for the organisation as it prepares to advance its Real World Model.
Stanhope AI, a London-based deep tech start-up, has announced the closure of an $8m seed funding round. The round attracted a transatlantic cohort of investors led by Frontline Ventures, with participation from Paladin Capital Group and Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund, as well as follow-on investment from UCL Technology Fund and MMC Ventures.
A 2023 spin out from University College London and King’s College London, Stanhope AI was founded by Irish computational neuroscientist professor Rosalyn Moran and theoretical neurobiologist professor Karl Friston.
The team at Stanhope AI has been pioneering a new model of AI, drawing from Friston’s ‘Free Energy Principle’ and developing an AI for autonomous systems that “allow machines to mimic the human brain”.
Reportedly, the ‘brain-inspired paradigm’, known as active inference, enables machines to learn and adapt on the move, which Stanhope AI believes is a crucial capability missing from large language model (LLM) based systems that rely on large static data sets.
Stanhope AI’s technology is currently being tested in autonomous drone and robotics applications with international partners, teaching machines to behave more intelligently in unpredictable, real-world environments.
According to the organisation, the investment marks a significant milestone as Stanhope AI advances its Real World Model, which it says is a next-generation framework for adaptive intelligence, designed to function in dynamic, physical environments beyond the limitations of large language models.
“We’re moving from language-based AI to intelligence that possesses the ability to act to understand its world, a system with a fundamental agency,” said Moran, who is also Stanhope AI’s CEO. “Our approach doesn’t just process words, it understands context, uncertainty and physical reality.”
In a post on professional social media platform LinkedIn, she explained that the investment is about more than just fresh capital, she said it is a clear point of technological maturity.
“Over the past two years in London, we’ve progressed from foundational research and early prototypes to production-grade systems operating in real customer environments, engineered for explainability and scalability. The round is also a validation of that journey and evidence that our technology performs beyond the lab.
“We’re proud to be building from London, a deep tech ecosystem increasingly global in its reach and equally proud to be backed by investors spanning the UK, US, and Europe. That transatlantic support reflects both the ambition of the technology and the scale of the opportunity ahead.”
She added that the funding will accelerate deployments, expand the team, and advance the next phase of applied AI via active inference.
Earlier this week (10 February), Dublin-based property management AI start-up Marc raised $1m from angel investors in a pre-seed funding round. The platform uses AI to analyse fragmented sources of vendor contract and invoice data related to property units and consolidates the information for use by owners and managers to help identify discrepancies leading to overpayments.
There was participation from 23 angel investors including Ireland-based backers like Wayflyer’s Jack Pierse, Hostelworld’s Tom Kennedy, SoftCo’s Susan Spence and Dublin Chamber of Commerce’s Eoghan Quigley.
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