The founder of an app which aimed to keep women safe at night has raised £11.2 million for his latest venture.
Harry Mead (pictured, centre) was behind the non-profit app Path Community, which no longer seems to be active.
Then-restaurateur Mead developed the app after learning how many of his female friends felt uneasy about travelling home alone. To help build it, he retrained in coding and worked closely with female volunteers on its design.
It was singled out for praise from then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson for helping to keep women safe when walking home.
In 2024 Mead founded Augur with former Palantir engineers Imran Lone (CTO) and Stefan Kopieczek (head of engineering) to support national security interests, protect public spaces and defend critical national infrastructure using AI.
He has now raised £11.2 million led by Plural, with participation from First Kind, SNR, Flix and Tiny VC.
Augur’s platform integrates with existing cameras and sensors already deployed across transport hubs, critical energy infrastructure, stadiums, labs, innovation hubs and other sensitive sites. Using advanced AI and machine learning models, it enables operators to detect abnormal behaviours, track unfolding incidents across multiple locations and reconstruct events within seconds rather than hours.
The system pushes the boundaries of modern monitoring to support the full security lifecycle: from early warning and hostile reconnaissance detection through to real-time incident response coordination and post-event investigation. This gives teams the ability to intervene earlier and act decisively when seconds matter.
Crucially, Augur doesn’t rely on facial recognition technology. Anonymised behavioural and movement patterns are tracked through sensors, giving teams exceptional operational pictures and unparalleled intelligence, while preserving personal privacy.
Since launching in 2024, Augur has grown to a team of 30 in London and has begun deployments with major UK infrastructure and venue operators.
“The nature of threats facing public spaces and critical infrastructure has changed,” said CEO Mead. “Incidents are faster, more dispersed and often designed to exploit gaps.
“Augur exists to close those gaps, helping operators spot warning signs earlier and make better use of their existing infrastructure. Our goal is simple: to help protect people in the places where they live, travel and gather.”
Khaled Helioui, partner at Plural, said: “When it comes to protecting our people and critical infrastructure, we cannot afford to be as complacent and naive as we were in protecting Ukraine.
“The new focus on grey zone warfare and domestic sabotage is not a threat we are currently equipped to contain. Protecting our critical infrastructure is one of the defining challenges of this generation.
“The Augur team leverages a unique combination of deep field experience and technological innovation to deal with some of the most serious threats we have encountered as a society and a clear sense of responsibility not to lose our democratic values in the process.”