London’s Ares Intelligence raises €2.6 million to turn employee insights into AI adoption plans

What happened

Ares Intelligence, a London-based startup building what it describes as an evidence-based platform for AI transformation, has secured €2.6 million in funding.

The platform deploys an AI interviewer that holds confidential, voice-based conversations with every employee in an organisation, in more than 70 languages. Within weeks, leadership receives a prioritised, evidence-led roadmap identifying where AI can save time and money.

The round was backed by Creandum and Lakestar, with participation from angels connected to Google DeepMind. Founded in 2026 by Matt Falconer and 21-year-old Alfie Ranstead, Ares Intelligence was built to solve a problem the founders encountered first-hand while running Instruct, their previous automation company.

It says customers ran into the same problem: they wanted to automate parts of their business but had no reliable way of knowing where to begin. Ares Intelligence was to fix this knowledge gap.

Ares’ platform is GDPR (the EU data-protection law)- and SOC 2-compliant, with anonymisation controls that let businesses mask names, redact voices, or strip role metadata before reports reach leadership. Customers can deploy it on their own cloud or use Ares’ infrastructure, in the EU or the US, with data retention windows set by the business. The founders say the entire process, from training employees on what AI can do to conducting individual interviews, collecting insights and drafting recommendations, takes weeks rather than the months usually taken by a consulting firm.