Mobility startup Land Digital raises £700k from Northstar Ventures and Creative England
This article covers Land Digital, a Sunderland-based mobility startup, which has raised over £700k in a pre-seed funding round to speed the roll-out of its AI-enhanced platform for barrier-free tolling, parking and transport operations. The funding aims to advance the product roadmap and hires to support transport operators and airports seeking to replace or augment barrier-controlled systems with an ANPR- and AI-driven cloud back office.
Land Digital, a Sunderland-based mobility startup, has raised over £700,000 in a pre-seed funding round to speed the roll-out of its AI-enhanced platform for barrier-free tolling, parking and transport operations. The round includes a £500,000 investment from Northstar Ventures' Venture Sunderland Fund, £180,000 from Creative England and £25,000 from business angels, and will be used to advance the product roadmap and hire for commercial growth.
Why it matters
Transport operators across the UK are moving away from barrier-controlled systems, which can cause queues, reduce throughput and complicate revenue collection. Land Digital’s software aims to replace or augment that infrastructure with a cloud-first back office that uses ANPR, data processing and AI to automate pricing, compliance and operational decisions. If successful, this kind of shift could reduce on-site hardware costs, speed deployments and lower emissions linked to stop-start traffic.
The funding is notable for its mix of regional venture capital, public-sector creative investment and angel backing, reflecting growing interest in digital solutions for transport at a local and national level.
Inside the product
Land Digital offers a configurable back-office platform intended to integrate with existing camera and sensor networks. It supports open-road tolling — avoiding physical barriers — and parking management use cases. The company cites live deployments at the Tyne Tunnel (TT2), which handles about 17 million journeys a year, and Warburton Bridge, along with parking operations at London Southend Airport. The airport deployment is positioned as a reference for an airport parking proposition in a UK market where parking revenues are estimated at £2.1bn annually.
The product-led approach marks a shift from the company’s earlier consultancy model, aiming for faster, repeatable rollouts compared with traditional transport management systems that often require bespoke integration and lengthy on-site work.
Who are the investors?
The largest single investor in the round is Northstar Ventures through its Venture Sunderland Fund, which contributed £500,000. Creative England provided £180,000 via its Creative and Cultural Investment Programme, and business angels added £25,000. The mix ties regional growth capital with cultural and innovation funding streams.
Naomi Allen Seales, Investor at Northstar Ventures, said:
Land Digital has developed a genuinely differentiated software platform for transport infrastructure at a time when operators are increasingly looking to modernise legacy systems. The team combines deep sector expertise with strong technical capability and has demonstrated the ability to win and deliver contracts across both tolling and airport environments. We believe the business has significant growth potential and we're delighted to support the next stage of its journey through the Venture Sunderland Fund.
Malcolm King, Investor at Creative England, said:
We're delighted to support the team at Land Digital through our Creative and Cultural Investment Programme (CCIP). The team has built an innovative platform that helps transport operators address key operational challenges, from reducing congestion to enhancing passenger experiences. As demand for smarter, more connected transport infrastructure continues to grow, Land Digital is well positioned for the future. We're excited to back the team as they continue to deliver meaningful impact across the sector.
The investor rationale focuses on the combination of domain expertise, demonstrable deployments and a product that can be scaled across multiple asset types, from toll roads to airport car parks.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Jon Leighton, Founder & MD at Land Digital, said:
Operators don't want more technology - they want less friction, for their customers and their back office. This investment lets us bring AI-driven efficiency to both, faster, whilst meeting demand from operators ready to move on from barrier-based systems.
Land Digital’s board includes figures with sector experience: chairman Julian Leighton, founder of OrangeBus (a previous Northstar investee), and Non-Executive Director Mark Pegler, former managing director of ParkVia, who brings airport and commercial expertise. The team describes its advantage as a combination of transport domain knowledge and software engineering.
The bigger picture
This funding round sits inside a broader trend of digital substitution for physical infrastructure in mobility. Operators are looking for ways to improve throughput and customer experience without large capital projects. For investors, transport software that reduces operational overhead and can plug into existing camera networks represents a lower-friction route to modernisation than replacing hardware.
UK regional funds and innovation programmes are increasingly active in backing such transitions, as demonstrated by the involvement of Venture Sunderland Fund and Creative England. If Land Digital can translate pilot deployments into repeatable contracts, it could illustrate how UK startups tackle legacy transport systems while keeping deployments relatively low-cost.
The deal also underscores demand for pragmatic, software-first approaches to tolling and parking across the UK and Europe as operators contend with congestion, compliance and the need for better data-driven decisions.
They've invested in Land Digital
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