New funding will support Thema’s efforts to help private equity firms better assess risk and expansion opportunities using AI that maps evolving market structures while accelerating R&D and commercial growth.
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.