Xylo raises £2.8m to bring AI agents to UK planning offices
What's the deal? XyloDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a UK govtech startup, has raised £2.8m in seed funding to help local authority planning officers process applications faster using AI agents.
The round was led by CapitalTDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, with participation from Common MagicDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Sure Valley VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Tiny VC, and Endurance VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. Angels from DeepMindDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Gensyn, and Dawn Capital also joined.
Xylo builds AI agents that handle the admin behind planning applications. The pitch: not letting AI make decisions, but freeing officers who spend "half their day" on paperwork.
Its platform assembles files, researches policy, reviews site context, and prepares a first report draft — then stops, leaving the final judgment to the officer.
Why now? Cofounder Habs Kim was drawn to the problem after her family's move from South Korea, when a simple change-of-use application for a takeaway took six months instead of eight weeks.
Kim traces the backlog to the 2000s, when software replaced admin staff. "They had a secretary called 'Elaine'. Elaine would handle all of their admin. And then in the 2000s, the software arrived, Elaine got cut from the budget," she said.
The founders spent more than 300 hours interviewing planning officers and worked with Leeds City CouncilDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → as a design partner.
What could go wrong? Handing public-sector decisions any AI involvement invites scrutiny. Xylo's answer is to stop short of the decision itself.
To keep outputs reliable, it uses a mix of major AI models wrapped with evaluation, regression testing, and comparisons against official published reports.
The signal: Xylo claims councils process 40% more applications per officer each month, while 83% of officers say it helps them work more accurately.
The startup is targeting the UK's busiest local authorities first, with an eye on the larger US permitting market — a bet that slow, admin-heavy government processes are ripe for AI.
Read more: Sifted, Pathfounders
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
