- Nous has raised $17M from Heartcore Capital and Mosaic Ventures.
- Its AI agent acts on bills for almost 250,000 UK households.
- Nous says it manages more than £685M of UK household spending.
Nous, the household AI agent Greg Marsh founded in 2021, just raised $17M, led by Heartcore Capital and Mosaic Ventures, to fuel growth and international expansion. Chalfen Ventures, Joyance Partners and Bain Future Back Ventures also participated.
Marsh says just under 250,000 UK households have signed up, giving Nous a sustainable basis to be their spend management company. They manage over £685 million in spending per year, an average of £2,765 per household, and add a household every minute. The average household saves £734.
Earlier, Nous raised £6.6M in seed funding in February 2022, led by Mosaic and over 65 angels. With the latest round, total funding disclosed is around $26 million.
A hybrid agent, built for the moments that matter
Marsh is a seasoned founder. He was at Index Ventures before founding onefinestay in 2009, which AccorHotels bought in 2016 for $200 million. He later lectured at Harvard Business School, returned to London for family reasons, and founded Nous in 2021.
“The speed at which Nous is being adopted is a clear demonstration of its ability to save people huge amounts of money and time. We’re at the very beginning of a fundamental shift in consumer behaviour enabled by AI. UK households spend £1.7tn a year on things they pay for automatically and don’t have time to think about. We believe that over 50% of that will be managed by agents in the next 10 years,” Marsh tells Tech Funding News.
The AI agent finds better deals on energy, broadband, mobile and car insurance and does the switching for you. It will cancel subscriptions, complete forms and flag contract terms or renewal traps. Plus, the AI agent manages your family calendar, finds the tradespeople and books appointments.
According to the company, users choose their level of involvement when they sign up. Marsh says most opt for “balanced mode,” where Nous does most of the work but lets the household know about any actions it plans to take so they can opt out or make changes. More insurance products are in the pipeline, and Marsh also said Nous would like to move the household’s idle cash into higher-interest savings accounts.
Nous is FCA-registered and operates as an appointed representative of Stubben Edge & Partners, an FCA-authorised firm.
“We’ve spent the last 18 months building and refining an agent that not only feels magical but is in fact one that people can trust. If you’re going to be allowing an AI agent to make financial and purchasing decisions on your behalf, you need to know it’s up to the job. That’s why Nous is so focused on its vertical of household spending and admin and why we take safety and privacy so seriously,” adds Marsh.
Backers, hiring, and what’s next
The company also secured angel investment from Tom Blomfield (GoCardless, Monzo), Brent Hoberman (Founders Factory, lastminute.com, Made.com), Doug Monro (Adzuna), Richard Moross (MOO), Andrew Brookes, Angie Ma and Marc Warner (Faculty.ai), James Meekings (Funding Circle), Eamon Jubbawy and Husayn Kassai (Onfido), Will Dean (Tough Mudder) and Daniel Hegarty (Habito).
Hoberman was also an early angel investor in onefinestay. Heartcore’s Max Niederhofer has onefinestay on his personal investment list. Marsh has known Niederhofer for 20 years and has a lot of respect for him and for the time he’s spent with him. He says it’s much easier to raise money when you have a distinct product and customers who genuinely love the service.
Max Niederhofer, general partner at Heartcore, said, “Personal agents will transform the way we make household purchasing decisions and thus transform the economy in ways that benefit the end consumer. We’re deeply excited by the work that Greg and the Nous team are doing at the frontier of personal agents and are thrilled to be backing them as they [build] a next-gen platform.”
Co-founder of Mosaic, a London-based firm, Toby Coppel added, “What stands out isn’t the growth rate alone but what sits behind it: people are trusting an agent to act for them, not just advise them, because it is built to be safe and doesn’t rely on advertising. That is the shape we think consumer AI will take, and we’re delighted to back Nous as it moves into more regulated categories and beyond the UK.”
The business has “scaled by a factor of more than 20” in 12 months whilst maintaining the same team size. He doesn’t specify which metric has increased 20x or give a headcount.
The new funding will expand into more product categories, broader insurance, more financial services, everyday stuff, and international markets. Marsh says Nous is currently only in the UK and plans to go international.
Public opinion presents both a challenge and an opportunity for Nous. The FCA’s Mills Review found that 20% of UK adults are open to AI making their financial decisions for them, with trust, control, and access as key factors in determining whether people will go down that route. TFN reported on Doug’s €50M raise for AI accounting agents and Causa Prima’s $20M seed round for agents that will settle invoices between businesses.
The bigger issue is distribution. When the ChatGPT finance feature launched, it could only read the accounts, not make changes, and OpenAI has said users may move from getting advice to taking action. The fresh funding will decide whether people will trust a specialist who acts or a large company that only gives advice.
