Nearhuman raises £350K for on-vehicle e-bike safety AI
What's the deal? NearhumanDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Bristol-based physical AI startup, has raised £350,000 in pre-seed funding led by SFC CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The money will fund on-device safety technology for the shared e-scooter and e-bike fleets now common across UK cities.
What's the endgame? Nearhuman makes a retrofit camera module that fits onto vehicles already on the street. AI running on the vehicle detects pavement riding, close calls with pedestrians, and road hazards in real time.
Crucially, footage is processed and redacted on board, so sensitive video never leaves the vehicle. Operators receive safety analytics without replacing their fleets, while councils gain street-level data on the condition of roads, cycle lanes, and pavements.
Why now? Shared micromobility has expanded faster than the tools to manage it. In 2025, 235 pedestrians were injured in reported collisions involving e-scooters in Great Britain, according to Department for Transport figures.
Operators and councils have little direct evidence of how and where vehicles are ridden, despite growing concern about pavement riding and other unsafe behaviour.
Who's behind it? Founder Faizan Mir grew up in Kashmir, studied robotics at UWE Bristol, and built Nearhuman at Bristol Robotics Laboratory. He represented North India in Mobile Robotics at IndiaSkills, the national skills competition, winning a Medallion for Excellence.
What's next? Nearhuman has launched a live pilot in Bristol and plans to release further AI products in the coming months. The new capital will support product development, on-street testing, and commercial deployment with operators and councils.
"Shared scooters and bikes are one of the best things to happen to cities, but operators and councils are working blind," Mir said. "We're giving them eyes on the ground, with privacy built into the hardware."
The signal: AI has reshaped how people work on screens; the next shift is AI that runs inside physical machines. Mir's investors frame e-scooters as a starting point for what Nearhuman is really building: an intelligence layer for the physical world.
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Image credit: Generated with Gemini
