UK startup Scope has raised $20m (£15m) in Series A investment, which could spell the end of time-consuming clipboard inspections.
Jonathan Low and Jakob Cassiman founded Scope in 2024 to create an AI inspection platform for the testing, inspection and certification industry (TIC).
Inspection is the most common way physical data is collected, underpinning the integrity, operation and safety of every industry.
However, the software the inspection process runs on hasn’t changed in 20 years – which is why Low and Cassiman launched Scope.
They identified the problem that most inspectors still carry a clipboard and a typical four-hour inspection would entail spending days at a desk, manually transcribing findings into reports and chasing data across paper forms and legacy systems.
Scope’s AI platform changes all that by helping inspection teams capture findings in the field, autofill forms, and generate reports automatically – cutting report production time by up to 10x and error rates by 95 per cent.
9x ARR growth
Already, inspectors at six of the top 10 global inspection companies are using it and every pilot has converted to a paying customer – resulting in Scope’s ARR growing 9x since launch.
Explaining their investment, Stephane Kurgan and Bastian Hasslinger, of Index Ventures, said: “There’s a type of founder we keep coming back to at Index: someone who works so obsessively to fix a problem they’ve identified that it becomes their only calling.
“Rather than a market to be sized, it’s a challenge they feel compelled to solve. That’s how it felt the first time we sat down with Jonny Low, Scope’s CEO and co-founder.
“When we met Jonny, it immediately became clear that he had an intimate knowledge of the industry he wanted to make more efficient.
“Jonny and his co-founder Jakob had spent months cold-calling testing, investigations and certifications (TIC) companies, visiting sites and joining inspections themselves.
“The result is a product that TIC firms love. Scope starts by giving inspectors that time back: replacing clipboards and manual reporting with AI-powered workflows that compress days of desk work into hours, so they can spend more time in the field, doing what they are hired to do.
“But the vision goes far beyond the inspection report. Scope is processing a new kind of data that has never been captured before, enabling the platform to understand how physical assets behave, degrade and are maintained.”
Kurgan and Hasslinger added: “It’ a big vision, but Jonny and Jakob have the urgency, intelligence and determination to take it on.
They’ll visit customer at ‘drop of a hat’
“They’ll fly across the Atlantic to close a single candidate and visit a new country and a new customer site at the drop of a hat.
“But they pair it with a rare honesty about what the know and what they don’t.
“Where they have conviction, they move with extraordinary speed. Where they are still learning, they seek out the hardest feedback that can find.”
Low said: “We’re thankful to Index Ventures for believing in us to build a generational company.
“Additionally, our earliest backers at Susa Ventures and Entrepreneurs First, who have doubled down in every round and we’re proud to call our friends.
“Finally, we’re exceedingly grateful to our customers. There’s too many to name, but from taking a chance on us in the beginning, to the results today – this raise is for you.
“We promise to work every day in service of building a world where physical information is as accessible, malleable and useful as digital information – where the two billion non-desk workers are empowered to do the best work of their lives.”