Atlian, a company building software for the United Kingdom’s independent construction insurance brokers, has raised a £600,000 pre-seed round led by Fuel Ventures. SyndicateRoom's Access EIS, the GI Network (GIN) and angel investors including Chris Mairs also participate in the round. The funding takes Atlian through its commercial launch, deepens its construction data and brings in its first senior hire, a head of sales from the broker market.
Atlian uses AI to spot every construction project in Britain from the moment it is planned, often before work on site begins, and puts those projects in front of the brokers who insure them. Brokers often hear about a job only after a rival has already quoted for it, and submissions are stitched together manually and lost in crowded inboxes. Atlian focuses on turning weeks of chasing new business into minutes by surfacing planned projects earlier and giving brokers structured access to opportunities.
Construction is described as one of Britain's biggest industries and one of the last still insured by phone, email and PDF. More than 728,000 projects are live across the country at any one time, and brokers risk missing out on work because they receive information too late or in unstructured formats. Atlian positions its tools to address this by connecting planning-stage project data with brokers who need timely, accurate information to quote and place cover.
Traction for Atlian’s tools begins to emerge around launch. Atlian has built WhoWritesThis.co.uk, a free market finder for brokers, which has handled nearly 1,000 searches since launching in the month of the announcement. Insurance Age covers the tool within days of launch, and Atlian’s first brokers are scheduled to come on board in November.
Founder and CEO James Buckley-Thorp has a background as a serial founder in insurance and technology. He started Rupert and Buckley with £40, sleeping under the shop’s cash desk while building it into a multimillion pound business that made the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 before he sold it in 2016. Buckley-Thorp then founded Bequest, described as Britain's first life insurance app, and was an early team member at Zego, which became Britain's first insurtech unicorn. He has raised £17m across his career and was named a Gaingels Top 100 global VC-backed founder in 2024.
I went quiet for a year because I was looking for a problem big enough to spend the next decade on. Construction is it. Britain builds £200bn a year and still insures it like it’s 1995. AI has come for lawyers and bankers. The building site is next, and Atlian will see every building in Britain before it exists.
We’re thrilled to lead Atlian’s pre-seed round and back James. Having built multiple successful tech businesses and raised over £17m across his career, he is uniquely positioned to take on the massive opportunity in construction insurance. Britain builds £200bn a year and it’s an industry ripe for AI-driven transformation. Atlian is building the critical software layer that will power this market, and we're excited to support them on this journey.
We wanted our first investment to show exactly what our members can back: a founder who has done it before, going after a huge market that technology has barely touched. Atlian is that company.
