Serve First, a British AI-driven customer experience and performance management platform, has secured €5.7 million (£5 million) in new funding to strengthen sales and marketing function, including the appointment of a Chief Revenue Officer, and will also support continued product development, including further investment in AI capabilities.
The funding was sourced from Pembroke VCT and the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II, through fund manager Mercia Ventures. Both firms first invested in June 2025 as part of a €5.1 million (£4.5 million) funding round.
Erol Ayvaz, Founder and CEO of Serve First, says: “The company’s growth over the last year is a clear indication of the market appetite for Serve First’s offering, and this latest funding injection speaks to both the future potential of the business and the strong delivery over the last year by our exceptional team.
“It’s an exciting time to be operating in this space, and there remains considerable untapped potential for Serve First’s offering. We expect market demand to accelerate rapidly with the rise of agentic AI, which is making customer experience far more critical to business performance than ever before.”
Serve First’s raise sits within a wider stream of funding into European AI companies focused on customer experience, customer service and adjacent service intelligence:
- Germany: Berlin-based Parloa raised €105 million to develop agentic AI for enterprise customer service; Cologne-based octonomy brought in €18.5 million to advance agentic AI for complex service workflows,
- UK: London-based PolyAI secured €73.2 million to expand its enterprise conversational AI platform globally; London-based Gradient Labs raised over €11 million to scale its AI customer service agent and expand commercial and R&D functions,
- France: Paris-based GetVocal raised €22 million to expand across Europe and strengthen its hybrid human-AI customer experience platform
- Sweden: Stockholm-based Agaton secured €8.4 million to turn customer conversations into revenue insights
- Denmark: Copenhagen-based deepdots raised €5.5 million to scale its AI-driven customer feedback platform.
Together, those rounds amount to over €243 million, suggesting that investors have continued to back software businesses that help enterprises manage customer interactions, feedback and service operations with AI.
Two of the closest comparables, PolyAI and Gradient Labs, are also British, which makes that national link especially relevant when positioning Serve First in the market.
Fred Ursell, Head of Investments at Pembroke Investment Managers, adds: “The best investments reveal themselves quickly. Erol is a rare founder – someone who has both operated multi-site businesses at the coalface and scaled software companies, which means he understood this problem from the inside before Serve First ever wrote a line of code.
“That founder-market fit is showing in the numbers: since backing him in June 2025, Serve First has grown revenue at breakneck speed, deepened relationships with its existing enterprise clients, and secured a significant European rollout with a major client. When a portfolio company executes this well this early, increasing our support is an obvious decision. We’re excited to back the team through the next phase.”
Launched in 2023 by Erol Ayvaz, Serve First is an AI-driven CX and performance intelligence platform for multi-site organisations. It brings together customer feedback, mystery shopping, operational audits and real-time action management in one connected system. Its software then translates these insights into actions for frontline teams, helping businesses to act on customer insight.
The company operates across sectors including retail, hospitality, health & wellness, franchise and facilities management, and key clients include Alphega Pharmacy, Aramark and Elior Group.
Howard Mitchell, Investment Director at Mercia Ventures, says: “The Serve First team have built a great product that is loved by their expanding list of customers. With market demand strengthening, this is an opportune time for them to accelerate growth. We are excited to support them on their journey.”
Since their initial investment, Serve First says they have almost doubled its annual recurring revenue (ARR) to over €2.2 million (£2 million) and attracted new customers including Brentford FC, The Sushi Co, Topps Tiles, The Body Shop and Spud Bros. It has also expanded into Europe by securing a contract with a chain of over 2,500 pharmacies in 7 countries.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/04/british-cx-software-startup-serve-first-secures-e5-7-million-for-growth-and-product-development/
