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News & Insights.
The latest news from our founders, and our partners on where AI is taking work, investing and the companies we back.
SVV publishes · every FridayAgenticInvestor WeeklyBarry Downes on how AI agents are changing investing, investment firms and the companies we back.
Recent issues
Latest issue · 23.10.26The AI Apocalypse Is Cancelled* - Is the Black Box Finally Opening?What if AI’s black box is easier to open than we thought? That is the question I keep coming back to this week. We have spent years debating what increasingly capable models can do. A promising line of research is asking whether we can understand much more clearly how they do it.Read on LinkedIn →16.10.26The AI boom meets the balance sheetYou can be right about AI and still make the wrong investment. This week brought that tension into focus. Concerns about financing the infrastructure build-out collided with another round of model launches. Meanwhile, developments in AI security raised questions about the cost of putting increasingly capable agents to work.Read on LinkedIn →09.10.26When AI starts making discoveries, who captures the value?If AI can produce new ideas faster than experts can validate them, where does the investment opportunity move? That is the question connecting three developments in this week’s AgenticInvestor briefing: AI-generated mathematical research, Google’s enterprise agent launch and another reduction in the cost of intelligence.Read on LinkedIn →
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From the portfolio.
Rounds, new investments and partnerships from across the portfolio.
Why we backed SymbeIn enterprise sales, the hardest meeting is the one the salesperson never attends. A buyer can love a product and still struggle to convince their colleagues it’s worth the investment. Symbe helps sellers and buyers build that business case together, and more than 2,000 companies have already used it.Read more →
Nettle raises $4.8m to scale the AI workspace for loss control globallySVV has invested in Nettle, the AI workspace for commercial insurance Loss Control. Nettle’s $4.8M Seed round will support its US and European expansion as it scales technology helping insurers complete risk inspections 5x faster.Read more →
SVV joins the University of Edinburgh AI Accelerator as Investor in ResidenceSVV has joined the University of Edinburgh’s AI Accelerator as an Investor in Residence, supporting the current cohort of AI-driven companies with investor insight, commercial guidance and access to the wider venture ecosystem.Read more →
Souk raises $1.6m to wake up the inactive 80% of B2B partner programmes with AISouk, the British tech startup building an AI Partner Manager to power go-to-market partnerships, has today announced a $1.6 million pre-seed funding round.Read more →
Barry Downes named in the Business Post's Connected 100Congratulations to our Managing Partner, Barry Downes, on his inclusion in the Business Post's Connected 100, Connected's list of the most influential people in Irish tech.Read more →
University spin-out BeCertain raises £1.7m to bring clinical-grade AI to dental diagnosticsBeCertain, a spinout from King’s and the University of Surrey, has secured £1.7 million in a pre-seed investment round led by specialist AI VC SVV.Read more →
SVV open-sources the AI workflows powering its investment teamSVV has launched AgenticInvestor.org, a free open-source platform giving the wider investor community access to the agent-based workflows SVV has built and refined across its own investment operations.Read more →
GovTech Xylo raises £2.8m to give planning officers their week backXylo - backed by SVV - deploys AI agents to handle the admin, not the judgement - helping councils process 40% more applications per officer each month, with greater accuracy.Read more →02Insights
Our take on the AI industry.
Where AI is heading, who wins and what it means for founders. Articles and press from the SVV team.
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