London-based AI startup Gradient Labs, founded by three former Monzo staff members, has raised £2.8m in seed funding.
Gradient Labs is developing a number of large language model AI customer service agents capable of acting “like humans”.
The startup claims its AI agent can resolve up to 80% of customer queries including using actions and account data.
It was founded by Dimitri Masin along with Neal Lathia and Danai Antoniou, all of whom previously worked at challenger bank Monzo.
Masin spent seven years at the bank, working as the head of analytics and data, VP of data and finally the VP of data science, financial crime and fraud.
Lathia and Antoniou were both machine learning engineers at Monzo.
“A big thank you to all investors, design partners and early employees who have put their trust in us and have joined us on our mission to redefine customer support for the years to come. Let’s do it!” wrote Masin in a LinkedIn post.
The seed investment round was led by LocalGlobe. Additional funding came from Puzzle Ventures and a host of angels including Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield.
“This ex-Monzo team is building autonomous agents that truly ‘act like humans’,” said LocalGlobe.
“They tackle complex tasks for companies in higher-risk environments with guaranteed quality of outcomes for customers.”