Supply chain startup Epoch raises £4.7m led by Burnt Island Ventures and Sand River
This article covers Epoch, a supply chain startup that has raised £4.7m in a seed funding round and launched a self-serve product to automate regulatory compliance for small and mid-sized businesses, beginning with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). It aims to help those businesses and their buyers generate cited first-mile evidence for tracing and due diligence, reducing reliance on supplier questionnaires and supporting compliance with emerging EU supply chain rules.
Epoch, a supply chain startup, has raised £4.7m in a seed funding round and launched a self-serve product aimed at automating regulatory compliance for small and mid-sized businesses, beginning with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). The product uses geospatial AI and agentic research to map the “first mile” of supply chains — farms, plantations and mines — and generate evidence that businesses can use to meet new tracing and due diligence obligations.
Why it matters
Regulatory reporting on supply chains is increasing across Europe. The EUDR requires firms placing cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya or wood products on the EU market to prove goods are deforestation-free, traced to the plot where the commodity was grown, and covered by a Due Diligence Statement. Large and medium operators will be in scope from 30 December 2026, and most micro and small operators from 30 June 2027.
Many suppliers — especially smallholders for commodities such as cocoa, coffee and rubber — do not hold plot-level coordinates. Some countries now restrict what location data can be shared. That leaves smaller buyers exposed: they lack the purchasing power of larger operators and often receive incomplete questionnaire responses. A solution that reduces reliance on supplier questionnaires can therefore lower compliance risk for SMBs and streamline reporting across multiple regulations.
Inside the product
Epoch’s platform accepts whatever supplier information a company already holds, from simple supplier name lists to richer datasets. It then uses geospatial AI models, earth observation data and agentic research to locate supplier facilities, identify production plots and assess deforestation and legality risk without asking suppliers for plot data. The output is a cited Due Diligence Statement that can be prepared for submission to the EU information system TRACES.
The product offers a self-serve workflow for compliance teams and integrates with AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini for data cleaning and plain-language risk queries. Sensitive business data remains private within a customer’s environment. For larger customers, Epoch supplies first-mile data through partnerships with supply chain and compliance platforms; those partners handle the workflow inside customers’ existing systems.
Epoch says it has screened more than 12,000 suppliers for enterprise customers over the last six months and its data is available to more than 30,000 corporates and financial institutions through platform integrations.
In the announcement, Evan Smith, CEO and Co-Founder, Altana, said:
European importers need to know not just who their suppliers are, but where their goods actually come from. Altana is the AI network for global trade, where eight of the world's ten largest logistics providers, Fortune 1000 companies and their suppliers, and governments work together. Epoch's first-mile intelligence is helping extend our network to the source, so our customers can meet EUDR and CBAM and keep their products trade-ready for Europe.
In the announcement, Catherine Cormier, Chief Innovation Officer, Assent, said:
Adding AI-enabled first-mile intelligence to the Assent Network with Epoch helps our customers and suppliers better identify where risk may be concentrated, spot gaps in their data and build visibility into their supply chain across multiple tiers. We want to equip our customers with the most complete product intelligence network to allow them to make better informed decisions based on a reusable data foundation they can trust, giving them confidence they are meeting their regulatory and compliance requirements in the markets they serve. Our partnership with Epoch is one of many ways we are helping them do that.
In the announcement, Ranjit Jose, Head of Product and Partner Marketing, Resilinc, said:
Resilinc's platform works hand-in-hand with Epoch's verified first-mile data to help our customers identify exposure, prioritize supplier actions and streamline due diligence submission, creating a foundation for evolving EU compliance requirements and more.
In the announcement, Meredith Bearden, Managing Director, Supply Chain and Sustainability, 3E, said:
Combining Epoch's first-mile intelligence with 3E's breadth of regulatory content enables our customers to move beyond data collection to power full-scale compliance strategy across regulations, including EUDR.
Who are the investors?
Epoch closed a seed round of £3.2m led by Burnt Island Ventures and Sand River, bringing the company’s total funding to £4.7m. Christine Boyle, Partner at Burnt Island Ventures, has joined Epoch’s board. The company says the new capital will be used for product development, infrastructure and expanding the commercial team across North America and EMEA.
In the announcement, Christine Boyle, Partner, Burnt Island Ventures, said:
Large companies rely on their supply chains to operate their businesses, and they are often operating in the dark as to the local conditions around drought, flood, and forest health. The Epoch platform leverages AI, earth observation data and proprietary models to enable visibility into risk mitigation, and compliance. Epoch is a team of 14 that operates like a team of 140, punching way above their weight! It's a transformative approach to managing supply chain risk and compliance.
In the announcement, Greg Robson, Partner, Sand River, said:
A team of extraordinary capability and experience reinforces our belief that Epoch is best placed to become the single source of truth for the first mile. Compliance data becomes business intelligence and allows for healthier and more robust supply chains.
If you're researching potential backers in this space:
- Explore our list of supply chain venture capital firms in the UK
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Founder perspective
Epoch was founded by Jinal Surti (co-founder and CEO) and William Ouellette (co-founder and CTO). The company has grown its commercial team with hires including Dave Shanteler as Head of Partnerships, Mario Romero Garoz leading EMEA Sales and Tony Dawson leading North American Sales. Epoch reports a headcount of 14.
In the announcement, Jinal Surti, co-founder and CEO of Epoch, said:
Supply chain compliance has been built on questionnaires, audits and certifications, and that toolkit is incomplete: regulations keep multiplying while suppliers increasingly can't, or aren't allowed to answer. We've built a compliance solution for the AI era. One sweep across a supply chain, using geospatial AI and agentic research, produces evidence that can be packaged for every regulation a company faces, including the ones not written yet. Enterprises get it inside the platforms they already run, and from today on, so does any SMB.
The bigger picture
Epoch’s product targets a clear gap between increasing regulatory demands and limited supplier data availability. By producing reusable, cited first-mile evidence, the approach aims to reduce repetitive questionnaires and help smaller buyers demonstrate compliance to downstream regulators and customers.
For the UK and EU trade ecosystem, tools that standardise and automate first-mile verification could ease friction for exporters and importers facing EUDR and related measures such as CBAM. The integrations with established compliance platforms (Altana, Assent, Resilinc and 3E) position Epoch to reach large numbers of corporates without asking them to switch systems.
As supply chain regulations proliferate across Europe, startups and vendors that can convert satellite and location intelligence into audit-ready evidence will be an important part of how businesses adapt — particularly for SMBs that lack the resources of larger companies.
They've invested in Epoch
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