Ascentra Labs Closes £1.5M Pre-Seed to Bring AI Automation to Consulting Workflows

London- and New York-based Ascentra Labs has secured £1.5 million ($2 million) in pre-seed funding led by NAP (formerly Cavalry Ventures), with participation from founder-angels including Alan Chang, CEO of Fuse Energy, and Fredrik Hjelm, CEO of Voi. The company is building AI software for consultants and corporate strategy professionals, with an initial focus on automating the most repeatable analytical workflows in private equity due diligence.

Global consulting is a market worth more than $250 billion, yet it remains one of the few large professional services sectors that has seen little meaningful AI penetration. While law and accounting have attracted numerous VC-backed startups — Harvey and Legora among them — consulting has lagged behind. Industry experts point to the structural complexity of consulting workflows, the sensitive nature of client data, and the traditionally slow pace of technology adoption at major firms as the key barriers to change. Ascentra was founded on the conviction that those barriers can be overcome through extreme product specificity and deep domain knowledge.

The company's platform targets the private equity consulting space, where analyses tend to be highly repeatable from deal to deal. Its initial flagship product ingests raw survey data and outputs formatted, formula-rich Excel workbooks of the kind that junior associates would typically spend hours constructing by hand. The system supports multi-user collaboration, data visualisation and export of client-ready deliverables in Excel and PowerPoint formats, with auditable logic throughout. This focused scope — automating a well-defined, painful workflow rather than attempting to replace consultants wholesale — is central to the founders' thesis.

Despite launching at the start of 2025, Ascentra Labs already counts three of the world's top five consulting firms among its users, with more than 80% of its customer base located in the United States. Early adopters report two to four times faster execution of key project workflows. Co-founder and CEO Paritosh Devbhandari brings first-hand industry knowledge from his years as a McKinsey consultant and subsequent role leading AI product sales at QuantumBlack, the firm's advanced analytics division. Co-founder and CTO Oliver Thurston previously served as Head of ML at Mathison AI. The funding will support product expansion, engineering hires and a formal US market push.

NAP managing partner Stefan Walter, whose firm led the round, characterised the opportunity as an overdue disruption: while almost every other knowledge-work sector has been reshaped by technology, consulting has remained resistant. The backing from prominent operator-angels — including the CEO of one of Europe's fastest-growing energy startups — reflects confidence that a team with genuine consulting experience is best positioned to finally crack the space.

Sources

• Soapbox VC – Ascentra Labs raises £1.5m in pre-seed
• VentureBeat – Ascentra Labs raises $2M to help consultants use AI
• UK Tech News – Ascentra Labs secures £1.5 million Pre-Seed Investment