This AI startup has raised nearly £650k investment to accelerate growth

Shepherd, whose low-cost technology monitors machinery to detect irregularities and predict failures, has raised $870k (around £650k) in angel seed funding.

Funds raised will be used to support the company’s market penetration into the UK FM sector worth over £11bn per year. Current clients include high-end property management service companies, office building maintenance providers and restaurant groups.

The startup uses machine learning to identify behaviour that is outside the normal operating profile for a building asset or environment. If Shepherd identifies anomalies, then its alerts system sends diagnostic information straight to those who need it.

Will Brocklebank, founder and CEO of Shepherd, said: “After 10 years in building services I saw the opportunity for Shepherd to bring proven technology to deal with some of the challenges the FM industry faces.

“Use of our technology enables facilities management companies to provide a dramatically faster and more effective service at lower cost. For those companies with regulatory monitoring requirements, Shepherd’s low cost maintenance technology can show compliance 24 hours a day as opposed to reliance on infrequent manual checks.”

This technology allows facilities management (FM) providers to prevent or fix issues before they deteriorate so that customers are able to continue business without disruption.

Shepherd’s technology is said to provide constant monitoring and actionable analytics round the clock, meaning zero time is spent checking on a system unnecessarily.

Nick Ayrton, head of Aviva Futures, added: “Shepherd is the data science engine that enables businesses to take existing and new sources of data and use it to avoid interruptions, lost revenue or disruptive repairs.

“Shepherd and Aviva are providing real insurance that helps the bad stuff not happen in the first place.”

In May 2017, Shepherd was selected as one of the five startups for Founders Factory’s fintech accelerator programme, backed by Aviva.