- Gradient Labs has expanded its Series A to $26 million – $13 million in new funding on top of its initial raise – with new investors Octopus Ventures and CommerzVentures joining follow-on backers Redpoint Ventures and Exceptional Capital.
- The London-based startup, founded by early employees from Monzo’s AI and data science team, now serves fintechs reaching more than 32 million end users, with revenue growing 900% over the past year and customer satisfaction scores of up to 98%.
- Its purpose-built AI agents automate complex, regulated financial operations from customer servicing and KYC checks to lending workflows and dispute resolution at a scale no human team could match, handling hundreds of thousands of voice calls monthly.
AI is transforming financial services, but some of the industry’s most expensive and time-consuming processes still rely heavily on human teams. Customer support, lending operations, fraud disputes, and Know Your Customer (KYC) checks remain labour-intensive functions that can slow growth and increase costs for banks and fintechs alike.
London-based Gradient Labs believes AI agents can change that. The AI-native customer operations platform has expanded its Series A financing to $26 million, bringing in new investors Octopus Ventures and CommerzVentures alongside follow-on backing from Redpoint Ventures and Exceptional Capital. The raise comes just a year after the company secured $13 million in an initial Series A led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from LocalGlobe, Puzzle Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Exceptional Capital.
The fresh capital will fuel expansion across the United States and support the company’s broader ambition to build AI-powered financial assistants capable of handling increasingly complex customer operations.
Built by early employees from Monzo’s AI team tackling a growing fintech challenge
Gradient Labs was founded in 2023 by Dimitri Masin, Neal Lathia, and Danai Antoniou, early employees of UK challenger bank Monzo, where they helped build the company’s data science and machine learning capabilities across customer operations and financial crime. Having experienced firsthand how difficult it was to manage customer operations efficiently in highly regulated environments, they founded Gradient Labs to solve that problem.
While many companies have experimented with generic AI tools, financial institutions face stricter requirements around compliance, security, and customer trust. Gradient Labs was created specifically to address those challenges.
The company has developed vertical AI agents purpose-built for financial services. Its technology can automate customer support interactions, lending workflows, dispute resolution processes, and KYC verification checks while operating within regulatory guardrails designed for the industry.
Rather than replacing existing systems, the platform integrates into banks’ and fintechs’ current infrastructure, enabling organisations to automate complex workflows without overhauling their operations.
Why investors are betting on AI agents for finance
The company’s rapid growth suggests strong demand for specialised AI solutions. Gradient Labs says revenue increased 900% over the past year, while its AI agents consistently achieve customer satisfaction scores of up to 98%.
The company is also among a small group of financial technology startups running voice AI at enterprise scale. Across its lending deployments alone, Gradient Labs handles hundreds of thousands of customer calls monthly.
Its customer base spans both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, it has signed Stash, Rho, and Current as customers, while its growing UK and European base includes Wise, Monzo, Zego, and Pockit, collectively reaching more than 32 million potential end users.
“What we’re building is the agent layer that financial services need to run their customer operations autonomously. It has to work the way they do, connect to the systems they have already built, and handle the long-running work that has stayed manual until now,” said Dimitri Masin, co-founder and CEO at Gradient Labs.
Competition
Gradient Labs operates in one of the fastest-growing categories in enterprise AI. Europe’s AI agent startups are already chasing a projected $52 billion market, with competition intensifying on both sides of the Atlantic.
One major competitor is Sierra, the AI customer service startup co-founded by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and ex-Google Labs head Clay Bavor. TFN covered Sierra’s $350M raise at a $10 billion valuation in September 2025, the company has since closed a further $950 million round at a $15.8 billion valuation.
Another notable player is Decagon, which secured $250 million in Series D funding at a valuation of $4.5 billion. TFN covered both the round and Decagon’s subsequent employee tender offer as the company prepares for its next chapter. The company develops AI agents that automate customer support across industries, including financial services.
Closer to banking, startups such as PolyAI have raised $86 million to deploy enterprise-grade voice AI systems, while fintech infrastructure providers increasingly embed AI-powered customer operations into their platforms.
What differentiates Gradient Labs is its narrow focus on regulated financial services. Rather than building general-purpose AI agents, the company has designed its technology around the compliance, risk management, and operational requirements unique to banks and fintechs. Both Octopus Ventures and CommerzVentures are no strangers to backing fintech infrastructure plays, the two investors previously co-invested in London insurtech Flock’s $38 million Series B.
What’s next for Gradient Labs?
The next wave of AI adoption in financial services is shifting beyond chatbots and productivity tools toward autonomous operations. As banks and fintechs face growing pressure to improve efficiency while maintaining regulatory standards, specialised AI agents are emerging as a potential solution to some of the industry’s most persistent operational challenges. The backdrop is a broader transformation already underway: as TFN has reported, UK fintechs including Monzo and Wise are already deploying AI to cut operational costs and scale customer service.
With $26 million in funding, revenue growth of 900%, and a customer base that includes some of the world’s leading fintech brands, Gradient Labs is positioning itself at the centre of that transformation.
The question now is not whether financial institutions will adopt AI agents, but how much of their day-to-day operations those agents will eventually manage.
