Alchera raises £2.7m to turn transport data into decisions

Alchera raises £2.7m to turn transport data into decisions

13 October 2026: Alchera Technologies, a Cambridge company whose software helps councils and highways operators plan roads and bus services, has raised £2.7 million. The British Business Bank's South West Investment Fund, managed by Maven, led the round, with an extra £700,000 from Innovate UK's Investor Partnerships programme.

Not yet independently verified. Maven describes the round as £2.7 million led by its fund, while Business Cloud reports £2 million led by Maven within the £2.7m. The founding year comes from Business Cloud and is not on the company site. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

Who put the money in

Maven's announcement names the lead as the South West Investment Fund, run as SWIF Maven Equity Finance, with the Bayes Entrepreneurship Fund and The FSE Group also investing. The £700,000 from Innovate UK Investor Partnerships is described as additional match funding.

Business Cloud, which calls the round seed funding, gives a slightly different split: £2 million from Maven's fund, with the Bayes fund, The FSE Group, Innovate UK and existing investor Cambridge Applied Research alongside. The SWIF fund can invest up to £5 million in businesses across the South West of England, and Maven lists Kelpi, Blu Wireless and Q5D among its earlier backings.

What Alchera sells

The company pulls together data that transport teams already hold in separate places: sensor networks, traffic management systems and third-party feeds. Business Cloud lists bus locations, traffic signals, vehicle movements, weather and air quality, analysed with machine learning that includes a patent-pending traffic modelling method and delivered through dashboards and APIs.

Its site splits the work into three products. Alchera Data Hub supplies transport and mobility data for planning and operations. Alchera Bus gives local authorities reporting to improve bus services. Alchera Highways covers network planning, maintenance and operations for highway operators and contractors.

Where it is already working

On the M25, Business Cloud reports, Alchera forecasts traffic flows up to 24 months ahead to help schedule roadworks. In Lancashire it analyses more than 300 junctions and 85,000 network links to judge how well the bus network performs. The company's site shows customers and partners including Cambridgeshire County Council, Surrey County Council, City of York Council, Norfolk County Council, Jacobs and AtkinsRéalis, and it displays a Cyber Essentials Plus logo.

Business Cloud says Alchera was founded in 2016, has more than doubled its customer count in the past 12 months and expects to double it again this year.

What the founders and investors say

Anna Jordan, co-founder and CEO, said that every journey, to work, to school or to an appointment, "depends on decisions someone made about a road or a bus route." She argues the data needed for those decisions exists but is scattered across systems, formats and teams.

Rafi Khan, Investment Director at Maven, said: "We're thrilled to be backing Anna and the team at this exciting stage of their journey." Lizzy Upton, Senior Investment Manager at the British Business Bank, called Alchera "a good example of that, applying AI to a clear market need."

The money goes to product development and platform improvements for transport planning and performance monitoring, and, per Business Cloud, to deploying faster for customers.

Alchera in our catalogue

Our public transportation software category lists 11 products and our transportation management software category lists 15, so Alchera's bus and highways tools sit among a small field of listed rivals.

Company profile on TrustList: Alchera Technologies

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• Parallel Loop raises $6.6m seed to run AI projects for enterprises
• How to raise money for a startup, step by step

Sources

• Maven: SWIF Maven Equity Finance leads investment in Alchera Technologies, 13 October 2026
• Business Cloud: Alchera raises £2.7m to scale AI for transport networks, 14 October 2026
• Alchera Technologies company site (read 14 October 2026), 14 October 2026