UK govtech Xylo raises £2.8M to give planning officers their week back
Xylo - backed by SVV - deploys AI agents to handle the admin, not the judgement - helping councils process 40% more applications per officer each month, with greater accuracy.
Xylo, the UK govtech company helping local authorities process planning applications faster and with more accuracy, has raised £2.8M in pre-seed funding. The round was led by CapitalT and joined by Common Magic, SVV (Sure Valley Ventures), Tiny VC and Endurance Ventures, with angels from DeepMind, Gensyn and Dawn Capital, Mark Ransford, and exited govtech founders.
Planning departments are under pressure that officer headcount alone cannot resolve. The challenge is not expertise - planning officers carry deep knowledge of local policy and planning law - it is the administrative volume surrounding every decision: chasing documents, checking submissions, collating responses. Xylo's AI agents handle that layer directly, built over more than 300 hours working alongside practising officers. Early results show councils processing 40% more applications per officer each month, with 83% of officers reporting that the platform helps them work more accurately. The judgement stays with the officer throughout.
Founded by Habs Kim and Dermot O'Riordan, the company combines engineering depth from Cytora and Marshmallow with legal and operational experience from Hogan Lovells and Orrick — a pairing that shapes the product's ground-up approach to understanding how planning workflows actually function.
The ambition stretches beyond throughput. Cleared backlogs have real downstream consequences: more homes approved, more infrastructure consented, more clean energy projects progressed. Xylo's vision is a public sector that delivers same-day decisions as standard - the best service in a citizen's day coming from government itself.
"Local government has long been underserved by technology - not for lack of need, but because genuinely understanding these workflows takes sustained effort that most founders bypass," said Barry Downes, Managing Partner at SVV (Sure Valley Ventures). "What stood out about Habs and Dermot is that they did the work: hundreds of hours alongside planning officers before a line of code was written, and a rare combination of technical rigour and institutional understanding that shows in the early results. This is exactly the type of opportunity we look for at SVV - founders solving a hard problem."
Xylo helps local governments process applications faster and with more accuracy. Its AI agents handle the administrative work so that officers can focus on the judgement. Website: buildxylo.ai | LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/buildxylo
