Corgi Cafe opened on Old Street in early August and quickly became full, with most visitors working on their laptops rather than being typical cafe customers. Although the cafe is owned by Corgi, a San Francisco-based insurance company that specialises in services for startups, there are no insurance advertisements inside the cafe. In its place, it offers free Wi-Fi, coffee, and workspace on an ongoing basis in a district popular with the kind of people it aims to serve.
From YC unicorn to $4 billion in eight weeks
Nico Laqua and Emily Yuan founded Corgi in San Francisco in 2024 and joined Y Combinator that summer, receiving approval to become a licensed insurance carrier by July 2025.
In May,Tech Funding News covered Corgi’s Series B financing, in which the company raised $160 million, with TCV as lead, at a $1.3 billion valuation, just four months after its Series A. Three weeks later, TFN stated that Corgi had raised an additional $106 million, thereby doubling its value to $2.6 billion. Then, by July, TechCrunch reported that Corgi had completed a third funding round in eight weeks, raising its valuation to around $4 billion.
The rapid growth is comparable to that of ElevenLabs, the British voice AI company, which reportedly targeted a market valuation of $22 billion in July, following a 50 per cent increase in value five months earlier, without raising additional funds.
Although Corgi is smaller and newer, it is growing at an equally fast rate and also operates coffee shops.
Why founders keep showing up
Corgi Cafe maintains a simple approach by offering free desks all night in a district where founders and entrepreneurs go. In contrast, coworking spaces such as Huckletree and Runway East in London generally charge at least £200 a month for a desk.
At Corgi Cafe, you pay only for what you order, provided you order something.
The cafe was started by accident. When Laqua rented Corgi’s headquarters at 9 Claude Lane in the Financial District in November 2025, the landlord also asked him to take over the empty ground-floor retail space.
Laqua initially believed this was an error, but after checking things over, he chose to open a 24-hour cafe there on February 13, 2026, rather than subletting the space. The baristas for the cafe came from Starbucks, Peet’s, and Equinox’s Earth Bar. According to Laqua, the aim was to fill the gap for late-night workspaces in San Francisco.
The cafe also functions as an advertising platform. Corgi has a sponsorship initiative called “Own a Cafe Drink,” which allows startups to have their name on a drink for a set period.
There are cup names such as “Brexspresso” for Brex, and Corgi’s marketing materials list ElevenLabs, Rippling, MongoDB, Zerohash, Composio, and others as sponsors. Each free coffee serves as a means of advertising to the target audience and provides Corgi with a minor source of income in addition to its insurance revenue.
What’s different about London
London is, in fact, the third Corgi Cafe, not the second. Corgi opened a branch at Atlanta Tech Village in July, marking its first location outside California. The company intends to open five more cafes, including some in New York, before returning to London.
However, this is Corgi’s first cafe located outside the United States. According to Corgi’s community lead, London’s status as Europe’s largest startup hub has made it the obvious choice.
“The sense of community at Corgi Cafe was immediate. As soon as you enter, you are met with a QR code to join the WhatsApp group and a cafe full of people working on their projects. It’s really nice to have a space that doesn’t require a membership and feels open to all,” says Geraldine Cashman, senior account executive at CEW Communications, who visited the spot, to TFN.
This approach also aligns with what is known as “Londonmaxxing,” a term that has emerged this year to describe founders who prefer to make the most of London’s startup ecosystem rather than relocating to the Bay Area. The “Londonmaxxing” trend is part of the wider surge in AI funding throughout the UK that TFN has been monitoring.
Corgi is not the only company to use a coffee shop as a marketing strategy. Cursor has established pop-up cafes in more than 130 cities, and AngelList has turned its office lobby into the Founders Cafe. Corgi says its cafes are intended to remain open permanently, no matter where they are located.
There’s also a joke that goes on. When the San Francisco cafe first opened, some Yelp reviewers gave it only one star because there weren’t any actual corgis — just laptops and oat milk. Although there is a real corgi at Corgi, Trudy, that the staff own and look after together, with a Telegram bot to remind them whose turn it is to walk her, the dog isn’t really what the cafe is about.
Whether this method will prove as successful in Shoreditch as it has in the Financial District, time will show.
