General Catalyst has backed London-based AI agents startup Portia AI in a £4.4 million seed funding round.
Hype around AI “agents” — apps using large language models (LLMs) to automate tasks without a human in the loop — has gathered momentum over the past two years. European startups building such tools raised almost half a billion euros in the first six weeks of 2025 alone, according to Sifted data.
Privacy and security experts have warned of the risks of businesses deploying AI internally without proper safeguards in place, hazards that could become even more problematic with AI agents increasingly automating tasks.
Founded in 2024 by Emma Burrows, former CTO of Stripe UK, and Mounir Mouawad, who worked as a product lead at the Irish fintech giant, Portia offers business customers a library of tools for building and deploying their own AI agents in-house, while promising high security standards and to keep humans in the loop at all times.
Burrows was also previously a director of engineering at luxury makeup designer Charlotte Tilbury, where she designed and oversaw the company’s e-commerce stack. After joining Stripe’s UK division in 2020, she helped build the company’s engineering team in London from the ground up.
Meanwhile, cofounder Mouawad has led a number of product expansions across the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) regions, both at Stripe and before that Google, where he helped launch Google Pay across 30 markets while working at the tech giant’s London office.
Alongside General Catalyst, Portia won investment from VC firms Firstminute Capital, which counts French AI darling Mistral among its portfolio companies, and Stem AI, the latest venture from former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear.
“It can’t be overstated how brilliantly positioned Emma and Mounir are to build a generational company,” Juliet Bailin, a partner at General Catalyst, tells Sifted. “Their vision is expansive, and they are well known among developers and business leaders alike for their ingenuity.”
The company says it will use the funds to build out their developer team and release a number of new features throughout 2025.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/ai-agents-general-catalyst-portia-funding/
