Last Updated: 8 April 2025
London-based startup nettle has raised £1.45 million in pre-seed funding to tackle a critical pain point in the commercial insurance sector: the risk assessment backlog. The round was led by Project A, with participation from prominent angel investors across insurance, AI, and tech startups.
With insurers facing growing losses due to operational bottlenecks, nettle’s AI-powered platform is helping carriers speed up assessments, unlock unused historical data, and train the next generation of engineers.
The new funding will be used to grow the engineering team and further scale the platform already showing results with early partners.
The commercial property and casualty (P&C) insurance market is worth over £750 billion globally, with an estimated £19 billion annually spent on risk engineering. Yet, 40% of risk engineers are expected to retire within the next five years, and insurers are already dealing with six-month inspection delays.
Today, most risk engineers spend 90% of their time on paperwork. This inefficiency is causing lost revenue and forcing insurers to turn away billions in potential business.
“AI has moved beyond hype - it's delivering incredible efficiencies and transforming how companies use unstructured data at scale. Our mission is clear: modernise risk assessment. Insurers who embrace AI will win.”
Jack Miller, nettle co-founder and CEO
The funds will go toward strengthening nettle’s core engineering team and enhancing the platform’s capabilities.
Currently, nettle’s technology helps insurers speed up risk identification before engineers even arrive on-site, using AI to pre-assess data and flag potential issues.
Other features include custom inspection guides, mobile-based evidence collection and analysis, and instant report generation – cutting down what used to take a week into seconds. By automating manual steps, nettle enables engineers to conduct 5x more inspections, significantly improving underwriting speed and accuracy.
The team is also focused on unlocking value from 50+ years of archived inspection reports, allowing insurers to transfer expertise to new hires and bridge the widening knowledge gap as seasoned engineers exit the industry.
Founded in 2024, nettle was created by Jack Miller (CEO) and Katya Lait (CTO). Both bring deep industry experience from their time at McKinsey's AI arm, QuantumBlack. Miller previously led the deployment of AI products for over 100 global insurers, while Lait helped build McKinsey’s first multi-agent GenAI product.
They started nettle to bring scalable automation to risk engineering, a domain that has long been overlooked despite its financial impact on insurers. nettle’s platform enables underwriters to act faster, more precisely, and with better data – a key edge as competition in the insurance sector intensifies.
A major insurer has already deployed a proof of concept with nettle, demonstrating that AI-driven automation can cut backlogs and double underwriting capacity.
The round was led by Project A, one of Europe’s top early-stage venture capital firms with over $1 billion in assets under management. Known for its deep operational support, Project A has backed successful startups including Trade Republic, Quantum Systems, and sennder.
“nettle is uniquely positioned at the intersection of technology and risk assessment. With a team that has a proven track record of building AI solutions for the industry, nettle is set to help insurers understand and maintain in-depth risk profiles in an automated way and unlock efficiencies across the insurance value chain. We are excited to partner with Jack, Katya, and the team as they seize this significant opportunity.”
Malin Posern, Partner at Project A
Other angel investors in the round include leaders from top-tier insurers, emerging AI startups, and experienced operators from the insurance ecosystem.
