The investment marks an important time for the organization as it prepares to take the ‘Real World Model’ forward.
Stanhope AI, an advanced technology startup based in London, has announced the closing of an $8m seed funding round. The round attracted a group of transatlantic investors led by Frontline Ventures, with participation from Paladin Capital Group and Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund, and follow-on investment from UCL Technology Fund and MMC Ventures.
A 2023 spin-out from University College London and King’s College London, Stanhope AI was founded by Irish computational neuroscientist Prof Rosalyn Moran and theoretical neurobiologist Prof Karl Friston.
The team at Stanhope AI is developing a new AI model for autonomous systems that allows machines to “imitate the human mind”, drawing on Friston’s ‘Free Energy Principle’ – a framework developed to explain how intelligent systems reduce uncertainty through continuous perception and action.
According to the first, this “mind-inspired paradigm”, known as active inference, allows machines to learn and adapt to movement, which Stanhope AI believes is an important strength that is missing in large-scale language model-based systems that rely on large static datasets.
Stanhope AI technology is currently being tested in autonomous drone and robotics applications with international partners, with the aim of teaching machines to behave more intelligently in unpredictable, real-world environments.
According to the organization, the investment marks a milestone as Stanhope AI develops a ‘Real World Model’, defined as a framework for the next generation of adaptive intelligence, “designed to operate in dynamic, virtual environments beyond the limits of large linguistic models”.
“We’re moving from language-based AI to artificial intelligence to understand the world, a system that has an important center,” said Moran, who is also the company’s CEO. “Our approach does not just process words, it understands context, uncertainty and practical reality.”
In a post on LinkedIn, he explained that the investment is more than just new money, saying it is “a clear point of technological maturity”.
“Over the past two years in London, we’ve progressed from basic research and early prototypes to production-grade systems operating in real customer environments, designed for scalability and scalability,” he said. “The circuit also validates that journey and proves that our technology works beyond the lab.
“We are proud to build from London, a deep-tech ecosystem that reaches the world, and we are equally proud to be supported by investors from the UK, US and Europe. That transatlantic support shows both the ambition of the technology and the scale of the future opportunity.”
He added that the funding will accelerate deployment, expand the team and advance “the next phase of applied AI with actionable intelligence”.
In other news the first AI funding, on Tuesday (10 February), is based in Dublin AI property management is Marc’s startup raised $1m from angel investors in a pre-seed funding round. The platform uses AI to analyze different sources of vendor contract and invoice data related to building units and aggregates information for use by owners and managers to help identify discrepancies that lead to overpayments.
Don’t miss out on the information you need to succeed. Sign up for Daily BriefSilicon Republic’s digest of must-know sci-tech news.
