Souk, a startup building an AI partner manager for go-to-market partnerships, has raised £1.2 million in a pre-seed round led by SVV (Sure Valley Ventures), with participation from Antler, Fuel Ventures and strategic angel investors from across the B2B software industry.
At the centre of the product is Coco, an autonomous AI agent that sources partners, maintains continuous engagement, tracks performance and manages payouts across the partnership lifecycle. Rather than adding to the pile of newly signed partners, Coco is built to reactivate the ones that have gone quiet.
Partnerships drive the vast majority of commercial activity, yet global systems remain heavily under-managed. Industry data from Forrester indicates that 75% of world trade flows through indirect channels, while most companies continue to run these programmes through spreadsheets, email and outdated tools. CRN Research highlights that 70% of partners stop selling within a year without ever formally leaving, and roughly 80% of partner revenue originates from under 20% of partners.
In early deployments, Coco has sourced partnerships expected to contribute seven figures in pipeline, won contracts with several unicorns, and reduced partner acquisition from hours of manual work a day to zero. Founded in July 2025 in London, Souk was started by Leo Crowe, Sofia Hamilton and Ayo. Crowe began his career at Anthemis Group investing in insurtech and fintech startups, before spending several years as an Officer in the British Army Reserves, then joining Deel as an SDR and, within two years, leading the UKI partnerships motion. Hamilton previously spent several years at BlackRock as an investor on the Emerging Markets team, covering cross-border capital flows, FX risk and financial infrastructure across high-growth economies. Technical co-founder Ayo is a former GitHub engineer and founding CTO at Tymbah who has shipped production AI systems across desktop platforms, and who previously worked on identity, fraud prevention and banking infrastructure at Trudenty and Union Bank of Nigeria.
Fresh capital will be deployed entirely into product development as the team builds out Coco's core architecture.
Partnerships are how most business gets done, yet the software supporting them has barely evolved. Companies spend enormous energy signing partners only to watch 80% of them go silent. With Souk, we are building Coco to handle the heavy lifting, keeping partners active and turning dormant networks into predictable revenue engines. This funding allows us to focus entirely on product development and deliver an AI-native partner manager that scales seamlessly.
The moment we met Leo, Sofia and Ayo, it was clear they understood a problem most companies live with but few have truly solved: partnerships that start with huge promise and then slowly fall silent. They're building Souk to finally keep those relationships active and turn them into dependable revenue. We couldn't be more excited to lead this round and to support them as they build something genuinely category-defining.
Partnerships are one of those areas every B2B company says matters and then quietly neglects, which is exactly the kind of overlooked, high-value problem we look for. Leo, Sofia and Ayo bring a special mix: operational experience actually running partner motions at scale, institutional rigour on the capital side, and the technical depth to ship AI infrastructure that works in production. We're glad to be part of this round alongside SVV and Antler.
We backed Souk from inception because the team combines exceptional operational execution with deep, hands-on category experience. Leo built high-performing partnership playbooks at scale, Sofia brings rigorous institutional market insight, and Ayo has proven technical experience shipping AI infrastructure. They are uniquely qualified to build the category-defining platform for AI-powered partnership management, and we are proud to continue supporting their journey.
