London-based Gradient Labs raises over €11 million for its AI customer service agent

Gradient Labs, a British AI startup focused on customer service in regulated industries, today announced a Series A round of over €11 million to expand its technology, marketing, sales, onboarding, and customer success teams and increase its investment in research and development.

The round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Localglobe, Puzzle Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Exceptional Capital.

“For many years, financial service companies have faced a dilemma: technology has made customers more demanding – they expect immediate service at any given time – yet the sector is risk-averse and heavily regulated, which makes it difficult to implement the innovations they have grown used to when interacting with businesses in other sectors.

“With nearly a decade of experience focused on automating operations, customer support, and financial crime processes within a top UK bank, we know that the cost of mistakes in customer operations can be dire. This funding round is further proof of the sheer demand for a safe and reliable AI customer service agent for regulated industries,” said Dimitri Masin, CEO of Gradient Labs.

Founded in 2023, Gradient Labs is an AI startup innovating customer operations for regulated industries. Its procedural AI agent, Otto, learns company-specific products and processes, enabling it to reportedly handle complex customer inquiries reliably and safely.

Gradient Labs was co-founded by Dimitri Masin, Neal Lathia, and Danai Antoniou — early employees of UK challenger bank Monzo.

“Having spent years scaling a top UK neobank, I understand the complex challenges regulated businesses face in balancing compliance and innovation. Purpose-built solutions such as Gradient Labs are critical to bridging the gap, and I’ve seen firsthand the safety and service quality improvements that leading UK FinTechs – those truly determined to deliver exceptional support – are achieving using its technology,” added Tom Blomfield, former CEO of UK challenger bank Monzo.

Despite businesses paying as much as €11.5 per customer service interaction, meeting expectations remains challenging. Today, 66% of customers expect a response to an inquiry within minutes, while one in three will walk away from a brand after a single bad experience. Subsequently, 87% of service agents report high levels of job-related strain.

AI-powered tools are helping to ease the pressure, speeding up response times and reducing the workload. However, Gradient Labs says today’s AI products only scratch the surface by providing simple frontline support, which accounts for just 25% of total customer operations costs. Likewise, those operating in heavily regulated industries remain largely unsupported.

Gradient Labs looks to assist these regulated businesses, such as those in the financial sector, by eliminating repetitive tasks from the entire customer operations cycle, from frontline support to back-office processes.

Utilising automation, its AI agent consistently resolves up to 90% of queries with a quality assurance pass rate of 98%, outperforming human agents and alternative chatbots while reducing costs by 75% – according to data provided by Gradient Labs.

“The Gradient Labs team has an exceptional Founder-market fit, having worked together for years at Monzo, giving them the deep expertise needed to build the best-in-class product for a complex, highly regulated market. Just three months post-launch, they secured nine customers – including one of Europe’s largest banks—and have since continued to demonstrate strong traction and momentum. We are very excited to partner with Gradient to help them achieve their bold ambitions,” said Alex Bard, Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures.

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