ThatRound raises pre-seed to fix UK startup fundraising with AI
What's the deal? ThatRound, a London-based platform that uses AI to match early-stage founders with investors, has closed a pre-seed funding round backed by 20 angel investors from Aligned Syndicate. The round, which closed in two weeks and carries EIS qualification, was led by founder Bradley Jones.
The capital will fund expansion of ThatRound's AI matching engine, development of its LLM-powered learning system, and three new hires: an account executive, a marketing executive, and an AI lead. The team has grown from one person to nine in under a year.
Since launching in March 2025, ThatRound has attracted over 500 founders and processed more than 1,500 funding applications. Of the deals its AI engine surfaces to investment partners, 62% result in an intro request. The platform lists 320 funding partners, with 70 actively using it to source deal flow.
Why now? UK startup deal volumes fell 7.9% in 2025 to 5,887, even as total equity invested rose to £24B. Capital is concentrating into fewer, larger rounds — average deal size hit £4.22M, the highest since 2021. Investors are pickier, and founders still rely on cold outreach and personal networks to raise money.
Founder Bradley Jones argues this is an infrastructure problem, not an access problem — and that the AI technology to solve it has only recently matured.
What could go wrong? ThatRound operates in a crowded space of investor-matching platforms and fundraising tools. Its 62% intro-request rate is impressive but depends on maintaining a curated, high-quality pipeline as it scales. Growing from 70 active funding partners to a number large enough to serve a broad founder base will test the model's precision.
The company also faces the classic marketplace challenge: it needs enough quality startups to attract investors, and enough investors to attract startups.
The signal: ThatRound reflects a broader push to bring AI-driven infrastructure to parts of venture that have long run on relationships and gut instinct. As capital concentrates and investors grow more selective, platforms that reduce noise for both sides of the table could carve out real value. The bet is that early-stage fundraising — historically one of the least structured corners of finance — is finally ready for a tech layer.
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