A Cambridge-founded startup that leverages AI to help cities manage roads and public transport more efficiently has raised £2.7m in seed funding, it said today.

Alchera Technologies has raised the funds from Maven Capital Partners through the British Business Bank’s South West Investment Fund, which led the round with a £2m investment.

Other investors include the Baves Entrepreneurship Fund and The FSE Group, with funding also from Innovate UK’s Investor Partnership programme. Existing investor Cambridge Applied Research also participated in the funding round.

Alchera Technologies is a UK AI and data company, founded in 2016, that helps local authorities, highways operators and their advisors make decisions about road and bus networks.

Its platform combines multiple transport and contextual data sources, using proprietary machine learning to show how networks are performing and where to act. It says its tech reduces the time needed to analyse transport data from weeks to seconds, which it says transforms how major infrastructure decisions get made.

Its customers include local authorities and road infrastructure operations. Examples include Lancashire City Council and the City of York Council.

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.”