£2.7 million funding to help Alchera drive growth

A Bristol-based technology company has secured £2.7 million in funding to accelerate the growth of its artificial intelligence platform, helping transport authorities make faster, more informed decisions about road and bus networks.

Alchera Technologies has raised the seed investment through a funding round including £2 million led by Maven Capital Partners via the British Business Bank’s South West Investment Fund, alongside Bayes Entrepreneurship Fund and The FSE Group.

A further £700,000 has been provided through Innovate UK’s Investor Partnerships programme, with existing investor Cambridge Applied Research also participating.

Bosses say the investment will accelerate product development, simplify deployment for new customers and support further expansion.

The company has more than doubled its customer base over the past year and expects to repeat that growth in the coming 12 months.

Anna Jordan, co-founder and chief executive 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.” 

Founded in Cambridge in 2016, Alchera develops software that combines transport, traffic and environmental data to help highways operators and local authorities plan roadworks, assess bus performance and improve network resilience.

Its AI-powered platform can reduce analysis that previously took weeks to seconds, enabling transport teams to identify problems, forecast outcomes and prioritise investment.

The technology is already being used across major transport networks, including the M25, where it predicts traffic flows up to 24 months ahead to support roadworks planning.

In Lancashire, it analyses more than 300 junctions and 85,000 network links to identify bus performance issues and assess improvements.

Customers also include City of York Council and the Greater Cambridgeshire Partnership.

Rafi Khan, investment director at Maven Capital Partners, added: “Transport and infrastructure operators are sitting on vast amounts of data but lack the tools to turn it into fast, confident decisions – and that problem has been chronically underserved by the market. 

“Alchera has built a genuinely differentiated AI platform that addresses this head-on, with proven results for its customers within an underserved segment of the transport and infrastructure market. 

“We’re thrilled to be backing Anna and the team at this exciting stage of their journey and look forward to partnering with them to accelerate growth.”

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