Cassi closes strategic pre-seed round led by Twin Track Ventures
-
Dr Keith Dear
- Author
- Published at
Cassi, the “Superstrategy” engine that blends AI with collective intelligence to improve high stakes decision-making, has closed a £500,000 pre-seed funding round led by London-based Twin Track Ventures, whose limited partners include the NATO Innovation Fund. The round brings together defence, defence industrial, capital market and growth equity expertise to accelerate Cassi’s deployment across government, finance and critical infrastructure.
Twin Track Ventures, a seed investor in compute, communications, sensing and supply chain technology, is joined by Jonathan Webber, founder and former CEO of UK unmanned air systems company Callen Lenz; John Cummins, former RBS Group Treasurer, CEO of Aviva Capital Partners and now Senior Adviser for Treasury Risk and Capital Markets at the Defence, Security & Resilience Bank (DSR Bank); and Ashish Puri, Partner at global impact investor Lightrock, where he leads growth equity investments in artificial intelligence, climate and deeptech companies.
Cassi’s platform helps leaders define resolvable outcomes, quantify the probability of success and identify the factors that most move the odds. Cassi’s forecasts have been shown to outperform unaided human judgement by 50 per cent, giving boards and commanders a clearer view of risk and expected value when choosing between competing strategies.
“Every decision is a bet on the future,” said Dr Keith Dear, CEO and Founder of Cassi. “We built Cassi so leaders can see those bets clearly priced. This round lets us move faster: into defence, government and boardrooms that need probabilistic, evidence-led strategy rather than intuition and PowerPoint.”
Nicola Sinclair, General Partner at Twin Track Ventures, said:
Nicola Sinclair, General Partner at Twin Track Ventures“Strength comes from consistently making excellent decisions, under pressure and in uncertainty. Cassi brings rigour and speed which compound into competitive advantage, for defence & security and in business. This is a standout team with exceptional technical depth and IP, and we are proud to be leading this round.”
Jonathan Webber, investor and exited founder of Callen Lenz, said:
Jonathan Webber, investor and founder of Callen Lenz“A mission focussed approach is key to understanding design and manufacturing priorities, to be able to evolve and produce at scale, through rapid iteration and managed risk taking.
Cassi’s approach – combining deep strategic insight and experience, understanding of customer workflows, structured forecasting and AI – is exactly what defence, security and defence industry need to understand risk and consequence, ensuring scarce assets are allocated optimally at all times.”
John Cummins added:
John Cummins“Whether you are steering a global bank through a crisis or allocating capital to national security infrastructure, the challenge is the same: measure risk properly and act early. Cassi’s Superstrategy engine gives boards and risk teams a disciplined way to link probability, impact and capital allocation. That is why I am investing and supporting the team.”
Ashish Puri said,
Ashish Puri“What really excites me is that Cassi offers a fully generalisable solution – they can help all businesses and organisations to probabilistically optimise for whatever outcome they are seeking to achieve. Their early success and focus on Financial Services – putting numbers on geopolitical and other factors more usually restricted to vague qualitative and heuristic analysis, in Defence, National Security and Defence Industry will quickly expand across the private and public sector. They have the potential to be the UK’s next Unicorn, and I am looking forward to helping them get there.”
The new capital will be used to expand Cassi’s engineering and applied research team, deepen integration of Cassi’s platform into customer environments, and support existing pilots with governments, financial institutions and complex industrials. Cassi will also build out its security and assurance capabilities to meet the requirements of defence and national security customers.
About Cassi
Cassi is a Superstrategy engine that combines AI, probabilistic modelling and collective intelligence to help organisations make better strategic and operational decisions. The platform structures questions as resolvable outcomes, aggregates human and machine forecasts, identifies the drivers that most affect success, and continuously updates recommendations as new information arrives. Early benchmarks indicate Cassi improves forecast accuracy by half compared with unaided human judgement.
Cassi was co-founded by Dr Keith Dear and Al Brown.
Keith is Cassi’s CEO. A former Expert Adviser to the UK Prime Minister on science, technology, space and defence, he brings 22 years’ experience advising on high stakes decisions as an RAF Intelligence Officer, in Downing Street, in business as Managing Director of Fujitsu’s £22m Centre for Cognitive Technologies, and expertise from multiple academic disciplines.
Al is Cassi’s Chief Technology Officer. A former Royal Engineer and physics graduate, he brings over 20 years’ experience delivering defence-grade systems, authored the MOD’s Human Machine Teaming concept, won an Army fellowship at Oxford in machine learning, and led Neurosymbolic AI at Fujitsu’s Centre for Cognitive and Advanced Technologies.
Cassi draws on experience at the intersection of national security, cognitive science and advanced computing.
