Alchera Technologies, which turns weeks of data analysis into same-day decisions for highways operators and local authorities, has raised £2.7 million in seed funding. The round includes a £2 million investment led by Maven Capital Partners through the British Business Bank’s South West Investment Fund, alongside the Bayes Entrepreneurship Fund and The FSE Group, with a further £700,000 in match funding from Innovate UK’s Investor Partnerships programme. Existing investor Cambridge Applied Research also participated in the funding round.
The funding comes at a time when highways operators and local authorities are managing increasingly complex transport networks while facing tighter budgets, changing travel patterns, ageing infrastructure and growing climate resilience risks. Meanwhile, the number of data sources keeps growing, from connected vehicles, e-bikes and e-scooters to weather, air quality and event data. Used together, they can give a much richer picture of how networks perform - but only if decision-makers can wrangle them quickly and accurately enough to decide where to focus resources and how to improve services.
Anna Jordan, co-founder and CEO of Alchera Technologies, said: “Every journey - to work, to school, to an appointment - depends on decisions someone made about a road or a bus route. Right now, these decisions often take weeks; despite the necessary data existing, it’s scattered across systems, formats and teams. We've seen how when you put that data together, you’re no longer making decisions on instinct and incomplete data but with the full picture instead. That directly has real-world impacts like reduced disruption from roadworks and more robust networks - making transport infrastructure more reliable, resilient and affordable for all road users.”
Read Alchera’s annoucement here.