Nettle raises $4.8m for US and European insurance AI expansion

Nettle secures $4.8m seed round led by MTech

Nettle has secured $4.8m in seed investment for its AI software for commercial insurers, Tech.eu reports. The oversubscribed round takes the company’s cumulative funding to $6.8m, following a $2m pre-seed raise in March 2025.

MTech led the financing. Existing investor Project A Ventures made a super pro rata investment, committing more than the amount needed to preserve its ownership percentage. Sure Valley Ventures, Portfolio Ventures, Ventures Together and selected angel investors also participated, according to Tech.eu.

An insurance workspace built around physical risk

Jack Miller and Katya Kinane founded Nettle in 2024 after working together at QuantumBlack. Tech.eu reports that their company develops an AI workspace for assessing and managing physical risks within commercial insurance portfolios. Its focus is loss control: the work insurers undertake to understand exposures and help prevent claims.

Capacity constraints provide the backdrop. According to Nettle’s figures reported by Tech.eu, loss control teams can have inspection backlogs stretching to six months. The company also cites an estimate that 40 per cent of risk engineers will retire by 2030, putting further pressure on the specialists available to assess insured sites.

Nettle combines the stages of an assessment in one system, from identifying hazards and gathering supporting material to analysing findings and preparing reports. AI and external data support remote checks for potential exposures, while guided inspections help people at a site collect the information an insurer needs, Tech.eu reports.

The software accepts photographs, video, audio, documents and third-party information. It can turn those inputs into reports, risk scores and recommendations. That breadth allows an assessment to draw on several forms of evidence rather than relying on a single document or inspection record.

Commercial property was Nettle’s initial focus. According to Tech.eu, the company has since extended the platform to liability, construction and workers’ compensation, broadening the insurance business lines it can serve.

Nettle says faster inspections can widen portfolio coverage

Nettle says insurers using its technology can carry out risk inspections five times faster, a claim reported by Tech.eu. The stated benefit is earlier access to information for underwriters, alongside more scope for risk engineers to concentrate on assessments that most need their specialist judgement. The figure is a company claim rather than an independently verified result in the supplied reporting.

The company’s position, as reported by Tech.eu, is that staffing capacity should not determine how much of an insurer’s portfolio it can understand. Nettle makes its data-collection tools available to agents and policyholders as well as risk engineers, allowing people beyond specialist inspection teams to contribute evidence.

That approach also has an economic aim. Nettle says involving agents and policyholders can make it viable to gather information about sites that would previously have been too costly to inspect. Its proposed advantage is therefore not simply speed, but access to risks that might otherwise remain outside an insurer’s inspection programme.

Funding will support expansion in Europe and the US

Nettle will put the proceeds towards expansion across Europe and the US and recruitment in engineering and go-to-market roles, according to Tech.eu. The company already works with insurers in Europe, the US and Asia, so the investment supports growth in regions where it has customers rather than announcing a first international launch.

For enterprise insurers, Nettle offers cloud and on-premises deployment, regional data residency and enterprise-grade security, Tech.eu reports. Those options are relevant to European expansion because prospective customers can consider both where their risk information is held and how the software fits their existing infrastructure.

The reported plans do not specify individual European countries, a separate UK launch, hiring targets or a delivery timetable. For companies assessing Nettle as a potential supplier, the next practical details to watch are therefore the markets and customer-facing resources attached to its broader regional expansion.