London-based Ares Intelligence has raised €2.9m (£2.48m) from Creandum and Lakestar, with angels linked to Google DeepMind also investing. The company was founded this year and says it has signed enterprise customers in Europe and the US in about seven months.
Ares was founded in 2026 by chief executive Matt Falconer and 21-year-old Alfie Ranstead, who previously ran Instruct, an automation business. The founders say Instruct's customers kept running into the same problem: they wanted to automate parts of their operations but had no reliable way to decide where to begin.
Ares is their answer. Its AI interviewer holds confidential, voice-based conversations with every employee in an organisation, in more than 70 languages. Within weeks, leadership receives a ranked, evidence-based roadmap showing where AI could save time and money.
The round
The €2.9m round was backed by two European venture firms:
- Creandum, the Stockholm-founded investor, which also co-led robotics lab Machenta's $40m seed last week
- Lakestar, the Zurich-based venture firm
- Angel investors with connections to Google DeepMind
The company did not disclose a valuation, a round label or the size of each investor's cheque. Post-round ownership has not been published.
The product and traction
Ares is pitching against management consultancies. It says it can cover the full process, from training staff on what AI can do to interviewing them and drafting recommendations, in weeks rather than months.
It also reverses the usual top-down approach. Instead of relying on a handful of senior managers, the interviewer gathers knowledge from the people doing the day-to-day work. It flags manual workarounds, broken handovers and the use of unapproved AI tools.
The company's most specific proof point is Tremonia, a Mercedes-Benz spin-out. Ares says it found more than 400 hours a month of avoidable manual work there within four weeks, after interviewing staff from senior leadership to the paint shop floor.
The platform is GDPR- and SOC 2-compliant. Names, voices and role metadata can be stripped before reports reach leadership, and customers can host it on their own cloud or on Ares' infrastructure in the EU or US.
What's next
Ares says the money will fund expansion and wider rollout of its workforce-intelligence product. Richard Keuntje, vice president at Creandum, said enterprise AI adoption remains "at the very beginning" outside coding. Enrico Mellis, venture partner at Lakestar, said the appeal lies in drawing insight from the people closest to the work.
The deal adds to a run of early-stage cheques into UK companies selling the groundwork for AI adoption, as large corporates move from pilots to budgeted rollouts.
Original source: EU-Startups — https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/10/exclusive-londons-ares-intelligence-raises-e2-6-million-to-turn-employee-insights-into-ai-adoption-plans/
