British DeepTech startup Stanhope AI has secured €6.7 million ($8 million) in Seed funding to advance a new generation of AI designed for autonomous systems operating in the physical world.
The round was led by Frontline Ventures, with participation from Paladin Capital Group and Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund, alongside follow-on investment from UCL Technology Fund and MMC Ventures.
The startup was mentioned in EU-Startups 2025 coverage of Berlin’s VC fund Auxxo secures €26 million to exclusively invest in “teams with at least one female Founder”, where Stanhope.ai is mentioned as one of the portfolio companies enabled by the Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund.
“We’re moving from language-based AI to intelligence that possesses the ability to act to understand its world – a system with a fundamental agency,” says Professor Rosalyn Moran, CEO and co-founder of Stanhope AI. “Our approach doesn’t just process words, it understands context, uncertainty, and physical reality.”
In the broader European startup funding environment, capital has flowed into a range of AI and autonomy-related ventures around the time of Stanhope AI’s €6.7 million Seed round.
For example, Allonic (Budapest-based) closed a €6 million pre-seed round in early 2026 to develop a robotic body manufacturing platform. In the broader AI sector, Mistral AI (Paris) secured a record-breaking €1.7 billion Series C in 2025 to expand foundational AI model development, while Nscale (London) raised €958 million for its full-stack AI cloud platform and Helsing (Berlin) closed €600 million to accelerate AI-powered defence software.
Together, these data points show a spectrum of funding in Europe’s DeepTech and AI ecosystem: from early-stage robotics and physical-AI hardware to large infrastructure and software-centric AI rounds.
Against this backdrop, Stanhope AI’s Seed financing reflects continued investor interest in startups building next-generation autonomy and real-world intelligent systems.
“This is very distinct from deep learning,” adds Professor Moran. “This is actually built by us [to be like] memory in a human brain. You get all the good efficiencies and reasoning, but you also get that fundamental thing: agency. It’s a real generative model.”
Founded in 2023 as a spin-out from University College London and King’s College London, Stanhope AI is developing what it calls a “Real World Model” – a framework for adaptive intelligence aimed at overcoming the limitations of large language models when deployed in dynamic, real-world environments.
Stanhope AI was co-founded by computational neuroscientist Professor Moran and theoretical neurobiologist Professor Karl Friston, drawing on research conducted at UCL’s Institute of Neurology. The company’s approach is rooted in the ‘Free Energy Principle’, a neuroscience framework that seeks to explain how intelligent systems minimise uncertainty through continuous perception and action.
From this foundation, the team has developed a brain-inspired paradigm known as ‘Active Inference’, which allows machines to learn and adapt in real time rather than relying solely on static, pre-trained datasets.
Unlike other AI systems that depend on large-scale cloud infrastructure, Stanhope AI’s models are designed to run directly on devices at the edge. This shift from cloud-based AI to on-device intelligence is becoming increasingly relevant as industries seek systems that are more efficient, resilient and capable of operating in communications-denied environments.
According to the company, its lean and explainable models require less data and energy, making them suitable for deployment in autonomous systems, defence technology, industrial automation and embedded devices.
The company’s technology is already being trialled in autonomous drone and robotics applications with international partners, including defence-related use cases.
“The future of physical AI demands systems that can truly adapt in real-time. The team at Stanhope AI are bringing a unique scientific approach to deliver exactly that, and are already proving themselves in high-stakes, real-world applications,” says Zoe Chambers, Partner at Frontline Ventures. “Their pace of execution, from academic research papers to a system that works safely at the edge, is both rare and deeply significant.”
The funding follows earlier backing in March 2024, when the company raised €2.6 million (£2.3 million) in a round led by UCL Technology Fund, with participation from Creator Fund and MMC Ventures. Since then, Stanhope AI says it has progressed from foundational research and prototypes to production-grade systems operating in customer environments.
In contrast to conventional deep learning approaches that rely on extensive retraining cycles, Stanhope AI argues that its Active Inference-based systems can adapt during deployment. This capability is particularly relevant in high-stakes environments such as defence or industrial robotics, where conditions may shift rapidly and unpredictably.
The technology is currently being tested in autonomous drone and robotics platforms, where machines are introduced to new environments and tasked with navigating obstacles in real time.
“We are excited to support Stanhope AI as they redefine the boundaries of machine intelligence,” adds Christopher Steed, Chief Investment Officer and Managing Director at Paladin Capital Group. “Their technology showcases the next evolution of AI – intelligent systems that can operate with autonomy, efficiency, and resilience across real-world domains. This aligns strongly with our mission to back innovations that strengthen and secure critical technologies globally.”
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/02/london-based-stanhope-ai-raises-e6-7-million-for-adaptive-ai-in-robotics-and-defence-applications/
