Female-founded Atheni, backed by Zoopla’s founder, lands £350K to help businesses actually use AI — TFN

• Feminine-founded Atheni raises £350K backed by angel buyers together with Alex Chesterman OBE and help from Innovate UK
• The startup has achieved AI adoption charges above 90% inside 90 days throughout training, manufacturing, monetary providers, and personal fairness
• Atheni is constructing a platform that helps organisations transfer past AI entry to measurable AI functionality and enterprise impression

The AI trade has spent the previous three years obsessive about constructing greater fashions, sooner chips, and extra highly effective instruments. But a rising physique of proof suggests the actual problem is not entry to AI, however understanding easy methods to use it successfully.

UK startup Atheni believes that hole might grow to be one of the costly issues going through fashionable companies. The feminine-founded AI adoption firm has raised £350K to scale its methodology for serving to organisations use AI extra successfully. 

The spherical is backed by angel buyers together with Alex Chesterman OBE, founding father of Zoopla and Cazoo, alongside help from Innovate UK.

The funding will help the rollout of the Atheni Accelerator platform and put together the corporate for a bigger fundraising spherical later this 12 months.

From shopper work to scalable platform

Atheni didn’t start as a software program firm. Based in 2023 by Mackenzie Howe and Louise Ballard, Atheni is growing a browser-based platform designed to take a seat alongside instruments resembling ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot, offering personalised steerage that helps workers enhance decision-making, judgement, and outcomes reasonably than merely producing extra content material.

Earlier than constructing a platform, Howe and Ballard spent two years working straight with organisations to know why AI adoption efforts have been failing regardless of widespread funding in instruments and coaching.

Their analysis uncovered a constant drawback: workers usually had entry to AI however lacked the arrogance, functionality, or context to make use of it successfully of their day-to-day roles.

Quite than counting on one-off workshops or generic coaching programmes, the founders developed a technique targeted on embedding AI steerage straight into on a regular basis work.

Over the previous two years, Atheni has examined that strategy throughout a various vary of organisations, together with additional training suppliers in South Wales, Durham College Enterprise Faculty, producers within the North East, non-public fairness corporations, and FCA-regulated monetary providers corporations.

Based on the corporate, these programmes persistently delivered adoption charges above 90% inside 90 days. 

The brand new Atheni Accelerator platform goals to scale that methodology by offering role-specific AI steerage whereas serving to leaders measure whether or not real functionality is being constructed throughout groups.

The corporate’s timing displays a rising concern throughout the AI trade. Whereas organisations proceed spending closely on AI know-how, many battle to generate measurable enterprise worth from these investments.

Analysis cited by Atheni highlights the size of the problem. MIT’s Undertaking NANDA discovered that 95% of enterprise AI pilots ship no measurable P&L impression. In the meantime, Microsoft’s 2026 Work Pattern Index discovered that solely 19% of AI customers work in organisations the place each particular person functionality and organisational readiness are excessive.

Atheni argues that the issue just isn’t the know-how itself however the hole between entry and significant utilization.

“Most AI startups are constructing higher instruments. At Atheni, we’re constructing grasp craftspeople. Organisations can inform you how many individuals have entry to AI, however not whether or not anybody is utilizing it to suppose extra clearly, problem an assumption or do work they couldn’t do earlier than. That’s the hole. Atheni measures it and reveals organisations easy methods to shut it,” says Mackenzie Howe.

Louise Ballard, added: “AI is the Ferrari within the driveway, however most individuals are nonetheless driving it to the outlets. Atheni reveals folks what it may well actually do, within the work they’re already doing.”

The aggressive panorama 

Probably the most direct competitor is now UK-based Multiverse, which not too long ago raised $70 million at a $2.1 billion valuation, bringing its complete funding to $570 million, and has explicitly repositioned itself from an apprenticeship and edtech platform into what it calls Europe’s “AI adoption platform,” focusing on the identical problem of constructing real workforce AI functionality at scale.

One other adjoining participant was Sana, the Swedish AI-powered office studying firm, although it’s not an impartial competitor: Workday acquired Sana for $1.1 billion in September 2025.

Atheni’s differentiation lies in its deal with measuring behavioural change reasonably than software program utilization. The corporate argues that opening an AI device just isn’t the identical as bettering how folks suppose, determine, and work.

Feminine founders tackling one in all AI’s greatest alternatives

Atheni’s elevate can be notable in a funding surroundings the place feminine founders proceed to obtain a disproportionately small share of enterprise capital.

Based on Beauhurst data, totally female-founded corporations secured simply 1.75% of UK fairness funding in 2025. Feminine-led AI startups face an excellent wider funding hole, with common funding considerably decrease than their male-led counterparts.

“I again founders who spot what others miss early. Louise and Mackenzie recognised two years in the past what’s solely now changing into clear: shopping for AI instruments isn’t the identical as altering how folks work. The hole between those that can use AI successfully and people who can’t is changing into one in all enterprise’s costliest challenges. Few are tackling it on the depth and scale required, and I’m excited to again Atheni as a part of the answer,” says Alex Chesterman OBE.