Cybersecurity startup Ghost Shift raises £465m led by Manchester Angels with UKRI
This article covers Ghost Shift, a Manchester-headquartered cybersecurity startup, which has raised £465,000 in a pre-seed funding round comprising a £250,000 angel investment and £215,000 of matched research funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The funding is intended to expand the team and support R&D into AI techniques to strengthen the startup's capability to operate in contested information environments and to assist public and private sector organisations addressing information operations.
Ghost Shift, a Manchester-headquartered cybersecurity startup, has raised £465,000 in a pre-seed funding round that combines a £250,000 angel investment and £215,000 in matched research funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The money will be used to expand the team and support R&D into AI techniques that the company says will strengthen its capability to operate in contested information environments.
Why it matters
The deal underlines continued investor interest in defensive and intelligence-led cybersecurity tools as information operations grow more sophisticated. Ghost Shift positions itself at the intersection of intelligence, influence and technology — an area of growing concern for public and private sector organisations seeking to understand and shape behaviour in digital information spaces.
For the Manchester investment scene, the round is notable for combining local angel network capital with public R&D support, a model that can de-risk technical experimentation while enabling early commercial scaling.
Inside the product
Ghost Shift describes its offering as a new category of capability designed to help organisations detect and act within contested information environments. The company is pursuing R&D that explores emerging AI approaches, including inverse learning, to enhance its technology platform.
Its leadership team brings more than 20 years of operational experience supporting the UK Intelligence Community and law enforcement with international partners. The funding is earmarked to grow operational capacity and the product team while advancing the AI research that underpins the next iteration of the platform.
Who are the investors?
The equity portion of the round was led by Manchester Angels and its chairman Richard Fallon, who also runs the network’s Cyber sub-group. Other angel participants named in the announcement were Cambridge Angels, Ante-Bellum Angels and Halceon. In addition to the angel investment, UK Research and Innovation provided £215,000 in matched funding, bringing total capital available to Ghost Shift to £465,000.
Manchester Angels says the deal aligns with the network’s sector focus on cybersecurity and intelligence, reflecting the backgrounds of its members as exited technology founders and operators. The announcement highlights Richard Fallon’s previous exit of Manchester data intelligence firm Naimuri to QinetiQ in 2020 as part of the governance and domain expertise behind the investment. Manchester Angels currently reports a portfolio of 22 deals, 45 active angels and an average total ticket of around £220,000.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Tom Sefton-Collins, Co-Founder and CEO at Ghost Shift, said:
Ghost Shift was founded around a simple belief: the information environment has become an operational domain in its own right, but the capabilities available to organisations operating within it haven’t kept pace.
This investment allows us to accelerate on two fronts. We’re building the operational capability and team required to scale what we already know works, while investing in the R&D that will underpin what comes next. Manchester has an extraordinary history of computing, intelligence and innovation. Building the next generation of information capability backed by Manchester investors feels very appropriate.
The bigger picture
The combination of angel capital and UKRI matched funding is part of a familiar early-stage funding pattern for technology companies building complex, research-heavy products. For cybersecurity startups, public R&D grants can enable experimentation with advanced AI techniques that might otherwise be too risky for pure commercial finance.
Ghost Shift’s focus on information operations aligns with broader policy and commercial interest across the UK and Europe in defending democratic processes, critical infrastructure and corporate reputation from influence activities. The round also reinforces Manchester’s role as an emerging hub for cybersecurity and intelligence-related entrepreneurship, where networks of exited founders are increasingly recycling capital and expertise into local startups.
They've invested in Ghost Shift
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