Riplo raises £2.3m pre-seed to modernise consulting workflows with AI agents
This article covers Riplo, an AI startup, which has raised £2.3m in a pre-seed funding round led by Cherry Ventures with participation from Blue Lion Capital. The development aims to support consultants and consulting firms by building an agentic operating system that lets human consultants and autonomous AI agents co‑create, test and iterate workstreams within a unified environment, targeting the $1 trillion consulting market.
Riplo has raised £2.3m in a pre-seed funding round led by Cherry Ventures, with participation from Blue Lion Capital, to build an agentic operating system that lets consultants and AI agents work together in a shared environment — a direct attempt to modernise workflows in the $1 trillion consulting market.
Why it matters
Consulting remains one of the largest professional services markets and much of its tooling still relies on manual, document‑centric processes. Riplo’s product targets that gap by creating an interface where human consultants and autonomous AI agents can co‑create, test and iterate workstreams without moving between slide decks, spreadsheets and separate automation tools. If it works at scale, the platform could shorten delivery cycles and change how firms operationalise strategic analysis.
Inside the product
Riplo describes its software as an operating system for consulting workflows. Rather than treating AI as a chatbot bolt‑on, the product allows agents to draft and stress‑test sequences of work directly inside the same environment consultants use. Features highlighted in the announcement include drafting, structuring and testing workstreams within a unified interface designed to let agents act on and alongside human inputs.
The company says this approach addresses two common problems: traditional consulting tools are slow and difficult for AI agents to operate within, and separate tools generate friction when moving from human thought to machine execution. The pre‑seed funding will be used to deepen work with design partners, expand the engineering team and continue developing the platform.
Who are the investors?
Riplo’s round was led by Cherry Ventures, with participation from Blue Lion Capital. Cherry Ventures led the financing and positioned the investment as backing a team building a vertical product for professional services.
In the announcement, Cherry Ventures, lead investor at Cherry Ventures, said:
Professional services is one of the largest and least disrupted markets in the world, and AI is finally changing that. Riplo is building a deep, vertical-specific platform for the world's most elite firms, and Tobias, Oliver, and Zack are exactly the team to do it. Cherry is proud to back them.
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Founder perspective
The company was founded by Tobias Haefele, Oliver Scott and Zack Zornitta. Tobias and Oliver met while working on AI‑native products at QuantumBlack and later advised on AI diligence and value creation at Hg Capital. Zack joined as engineering lead with experience building and scaling AI‑native software.
In the announcement, Tobias Haefele, Co‑founder & CEO at Riplo, said:
The $1trillion consulting industry is currently running on the digital equivalent of a typewriter. You cannot achieve agentic speed inside a slide deck designed in the 90s. We aren’t building another chatbot; we are building the interface where the next generation of strategic analyses actually happens.
The bigger picture
Riplo’s raise sits at the intersection of enterprise AI and professional services tooling. Investors have been increasingly interested in startups that embed AI into domain‑specific workflows rather than generalist consumer chatbots. For consulting firms searching for productivity gains and repeatable delivery, a platform that lets agents act natively inside human workflows could be compelling.
The deal also reflects growing interest from AI investors in tools that combine human expertise with agent automation. If Riplo can validate its model with design partners and win early enterprise customers, it will join a wider wave of European and UK startups aiming to replatform knowledge work for the agent era.
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