London-based Thema has secured $6.2 million to address gaps in how
private equity firms assess portfolio risk and plan expansion strategy amid
shifting software market valuations. The total includes $4.5 million in
pre-seed funding from a round led by Stride.vc, with participation from KDX,
Capital Allocators, and angel investors with backgrounds in private equity,
investment banking, and enterprise software, including the former chair of
KPMG. In addition, Thema received a $1.7 million UK government grant, in
partnership with the University of Cambridge, to advance trustworthy AI.
A repricing of software markets has exposed weaknesses in how private
equity firms evaluate portfolio exposure and expansion opportunities. As
valuations compress, these assessments often remain fragmented and manual. For
investors building platform companies, expansion strategy drives much of the
value created, yet decisions are still frequently made using disconnected tools
and individual judgment.
Thema is building what it calls Portfolio Expansion Infrastructure, a
system designed to help PE investors determine where to expand, originate
opportunities, and assess risk across a portfolio. Existing sourcing tools
typically focus on identifying companies rather than analysing markets, often
lacking broader context. Thema aims to replace fragmented consulting reports
and sourcing tools with a continuously updated view of market structure.
Thema’s AI infrastructure provides versioned representations of
companies and market structures that track how markets evolve over time. Using
proprietary AI techniques developed by co-founder Dr Dimo Angelov, the
platform processes web-scale data to identify how companies cluster into
markets, what adjacencies exist, and how those structures change. The result is
a continuously refreshed map of market structure intended to highlight
adjacencies, competitive dynamics, and potential expansion paths that
conventional databases may miss.
Developed in collaboration with tier-one private equity firms and as
part of a UK government-backed programme with the University of Cambridge,
Thema aims to help investors build conviction more quickly, define clearer
platform theses, and support investment cases grounded in market structure.
With the new funding, the company plans to expand R&D and
commercial operations and is actively onboarding customers.