Oxford AI Startup Astut Raises £1.6m to Solve Unprecedented Crises Without Historical Data
Astut, the Oxfordshire-based Hybrid AI company, announces growth investment co- led by technology VCs East X Ventures and SVV (Sure Valley Ventures).
Culham, Oxfordshire – Astut, an AI startup spun out of Oxford University mathematics research, today announces £1.6million in seed funding to commercialise its breakthrough technology that helps organisations navigate unprecedented crises where traditional AI systems fail due to lack of historical data.
The funding round was co-led by technology VC East X Ventures and specialist AI VC firm SVV (Sure Valley Ventures), with contribution from UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), managed by Future Planet Capital.
Founded in April this year by Pete Grindrod CBE, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, Astut’s technology addresses the need for transparent and auditable AI-driven decisions in situations with no historical precedent, high-impact consequences, and limited data – all conditions under which current AI methods fail.
These High Stakes Unseen Decision (HSUD) challenges are faced by a range of institutions and corporates in business-critical situations when there is no previous case data - such as reacting to unexpected or urgent disruptions, exploring one-off opportunities, or developing new practices.
Based at the Culham Science Centre in Abingdon, Astut’s Hybrid AI consists of a creative, explorative, and logical AI layer sitting on top of a large language model, generative AI layer. These twin elements generate proposed decision options, together with their supporting logical reasoning, which cannot be refuted by any of a given set of various hard and soft constraints.
Founder Pete Grindrod was awarded the CBE in 2005 for services to mathematics research and development and is a Founding Trustee of the Alan Turing Institute.
Despite launching just six months ago, Astut is in discussions about pilot programs with companies in critical sectors such as defence and security (including the Ministry of Defence), business-to consumer retail, corporate strategy and management consultancies, the UK's fusion energy programme, and financial, risk and investment firms.
Culham Campus, owned and managed by the UK Atomic Energy Authority, was designated in February this year as the first of the Government’s AI Growth Zones: dedicated hotbeds for developing AI infrastructure and attracting new private investment. Astus is the Growth Zone’s inaugural AI company.
Pete Grindrod, Astut’s founder and CEO said: “Astut has assembled a first-class development team and the funding will allow it to further develop its strategic stakeholders and channel partners within different sectors. The technology will go to market via those channel partners, becoming embedded within their own products and services to benefit their end-customers facing HSUD challenges.
“But this is only the beginning. In the future, Astut will develop further technologies that address intelligent and creative abilities of the human brain that current AI paradigms cannot emulate. Our creative AI is radical and will become a Sovereign competence for the UK.”
Barry Downes, Managing Partner at SVV commented: “We’re delighted to support Astut as it advances explainable AI for high-stakes decision-making in sectors like defence, energy and retail. Pete and David have developed a reasoning engine purpose-built for complex environments where AI must justify and audit its decisions. In a world where AI outputs often lack transparency or logic, Astut is redefining how enterprises and institutions apply reasoning-based AI to critical decisions.”
