Investment

DeepTech AI firm Xapien has secured a £6m investment, including £4.5m by YFM Equity Partners.

The company has enjoyed rapid growth since its commercial launch in January 2022 and the investment has also been backed by D2 Fund.

Described as the ‘ChatGPT of due diligence’, Xapien uses artificial intelligence to deliver an executive-level report on any person or organisation, anywhere in the world in minutes.

The £6m will be used to accelerate product development and go-to-market, expand into new verticals and extend their US footprint.

Chris Green, Xapien CEO, said: “Every year, billions of dollars are wasted on laborious and time-consuming background research.

“Firms seeking to do international business are facing a perfect storm. Emerging ESG considerations present complicated and nuanced risks. There is a continuing explosion in publicly available information, and ever-increasing regulation.

“This creates an increasing need for organisations to really ‘know’ their third parties. This includes their customers, suppliers, donors, applicants and investors.

“Put simply, firms can no longer afford to just ask ‘can we’ be in business with someone. They must also ask ‘should we’?

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“Traditional screening tools cannot answer this nuanced question. A typical KYC/AML search is a factual check of recorded data in structured databases.

“To really ‘know’ a third party, deep contextual background research is required. Current methods will not scale, but there is a better way.”

Founded by technology experts with decades of experience in intelligence and financial crime, Xapien uses cutting-edge AI and natural language processing technologies to emulate the complex process of human-led research.

David Wrench, partner at YFM, said: “Xapien has demonstrated impressive growth over the past 12 months. The high calibre management team has a well-defined vision and plan to grow the business further.

“They have built technology that is providing demonstrable ROI to its customers. What today takes days when produced manually can be done in minutes through Xapien.”

Xapien automates an otherwise manual research process to deliver an executive-level report on any person or organisation, anywhere in the world in minutes.

Full sourcing of all information gives greater assurance whilst driving major efficiencies for organisations in many sectors, including law firms, financial services institutions and philanthropy.

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Whether used for client onboarding, investment due diligence, compliance, reputational and integrity due diligence, donor prospect research and more, the technology provides a competitive edge.

Amory Poulden, managing partner at D2 Fund, added: “Understanding who you are doing business with is a time-consuming and uncertain undertaking. Xapien’s solution delivers clarity amongst the noise, allowing companies to perform radically faster and more accurate searches on individuals and companies.

“We were impressed by what Chris, Dan, Shaun and the rest of the Xapien team have built so far and are looking forward to working with them as they scale the business from here.

Chris Green continued: “YFM and D2 Fund really understand the market that we are serving and share our vision to transform it using AI and deep technology.

“This investment will accelerate our product roadmap. It is an important step in our journey to help the world do better business.”