London-based Toyo, a startup building AI agents designed to run day-to-day business operations autonomously, has raised a €3.6 million ($4.3 million) Seed to support product development and the expansion of its secure infrastructure, as the company looks to make advanced AI agent workflows accessible to non-technical founders.
The round was raised from Frontline Ventures, iNovia Capital, Tiny Supercomputer, and a group of angels from Amazon, Microsoft, and Cloudflare.
“The most powerful AI capabilities today are only accessible to technical early adopters. Toyo is closing that gap, giving every founder and operator AI agents that understand their business and work as an extension of their team, in a secure environment they can trust with real operations,” says Zoe Chambers, Partner at Frontline Ventures.
In the broader European AI agent and autonomous workflow space in 2025–2026, several notable funding rounds and product builds help situate Toyo’s Seed raise within a larger pattern of investor interest in agent-centric systems and execution layers beyond basic AI tooling.
For example, Elyos AI (€11.1 M Series A) – a London-based startup building AI agents for trades and field services – secured capital to accelerate product development and international expansion. Similarly, Maisa (€21.4 million Seed) in Valencia raised a substantial Seed to build “digital workers” that deliver accountable, hallucination-resistant AI agents for enterprise process automation.
On the orchestration side, Contents (€5.9 million Series B extension) in Milan is leveraging funding to scale a platform that ties together AI agents, enterprise knowledge and workflow approvals for global brands – a pattern similar to Toyo’s vision of operational automation.
Additionally, emerging infrastructure plays such as Overmind (€2.3 million Seed) in London are building supervision and security layers specifically for agentic AI deployments.
Taken together, these raises – ranging from Seed to Series B – illustrate a growing ecosystem of European startups focused on AI agents that carry out meaningful tasks, automate business workflows, or secure autonomous deployments, helping frame Toyo’s own funding as part of a broader wave of investment into agent-oriented tech beyond model generation.
“AI agents demand unique infrastructure that traditional cloud architectures aren’t built for. By leveraging Cloudflare, Toyo can deliver performant and secure AI agents at scale,” adds Dane Knecht, CTO at Cloudflare.
Founded in 2024 by Damien Tanner, Stuart Bowness, and Aidan Hornsby, Toyo is positioning itself as an operational layer for small businesses. Rather than offering another AI assistant embedded in existing software, the platform provides founders with AI agents that work continuously on a secure cloud computer, handling tasks such as research, outreach, website updates, and analytics integration.
The founding team brings more than a decade of experience each in building and exiting software ventures. CEO and co-founder Damien Tanner previously co-founded realtime developer platform Pusher, later acquired by MessageBird, and video learning platform MediaCore, acquired by Workday. Bowness co-founded MediaCore and later served as Workday’s VP of Emerging Technology, building and scaling product organisations. Hornsby co-founded Supercast, which was acquired by Fox, and has worked with leading podcasters and creators to scale subscription businesses.
The company argues that while AI copilots have become commonplace, they still require human prompting and constant oversight. Toyo’s model instead centres on delegation: founders brief agents as they would a team member, and the agents execute tasks across connected tools.
The problem Toyo is addressing is familiar to many early-stage companies. Founders often find themselves switching between dozens of SaaS tools, responding to emails, monitoring dashboards, and attending meetings, leaving limited time for strategic work. While some technically skilled entrepreneurs have experimented with agentic frameworks such as OpenClaw to automate meaningful workflows, these solutions typically require developer expertise and hands-on infrastructure management.
For the estimated 48 million businesses with fewer than 100 employees across English-speaking markets, Toyo sees a gap between potential and practicality.
The platform provides each founder with AI agents running 24/7 in an isolated environment built on Cloudflare’s infrastructure. Each agent operates within a sandboxed cloud computer, complete with browser access and app integrations.
According to the company, data remains within the founder’s environment, aiming to mitigate the security risks associated with running autonomous agents on personal machines where sensitive information such as API keys, customer lists, and financial data may be exposed.
In practical terms, Toyo’s agents scan inboxes, monitor competitor activity, and generate concise daily briefings tailored to a founder’s priorities. They identify prospective customers, research relevant contacts, and draft personalised outreach messages referencing recent funding announcements, technology stacks, or executive commentary.
Founders review and approve communications before they are sent, and follow-ups are scheduled automatically. The same approach extends to website updates, where agents audit competitors, analyse SEO opportunities, and build tailored options for review.
Toyo claims that projects traditionally handled by agencies over several weeks can instead be executed within days.
Interestingly, Toyo began as a voice AI product. However, as the team used AI agents internally to manage their own operations, they decided to pivot. They replaced their CRM, email automation, and website builder with internally developed agents tailored to their workflows.
Non-technical team members reportedly rebuilt the company’s marketing website over a weekend, and campaign launches that previously required several days were shortened to hours.
Toyo is currently refining its product with a small group of design partners, following early demonstrations that prompted other founders to express interest in replacing their existing software stack with agent-led workflows.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/02/british-startup-toyo-raises-e3-6-million-to-develop-secure-ai-agents-for-non-technical-founders/
