Strand Intelligence raises £1M seed to automate cyber incident investigations
What's the deal? Manchester cybersecurity startup Strand IntelligenceDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has closed a £1 million seed round led by Osney CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. Founded in 2025 and based in Ancoats, the company builds automation technology for Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) — the investigative work carried out after a security incident.
What's the endgame? Strand's platform automates investigations across cloud and endpoint environments, which it says lets security teams complete investigations up to five times faster. The founders will use the money to accelerate hiring and product development.
Why now? Co-founder Will Poole, who spent a decade in cybersecurity investigation roles, argues the field has stalled despite years of new tooling. "Security teams have more data than ever, but when things go wrong, which they do at an ever-increasing rate, we fall back, as we always have, on our most important and scarce resource: human expertise," he said.
Poole and co-founder Oli FletcherDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → have an unusual origin story: they met as next-door neighbours and first developed the idea over the garden fence. Fletcher said companies adopting Strand early are "already seeing immense benefits across speed, reduced downtime, and consistent, accurate outputs."
Why it matters: The round adds momentum to Greater Manchester's growing cybersecurity sector. The founders plan to keep the business rooted in the city as they expand south, then into EMEA and North America.
Adam Cragg, partner at Osney Capital, said Strand is tackling "one of the most stubborn problems in cybersecurity: how to investigate incidents fast enough to keep pace with threat actors." He described the platform as "a force multiplier" and said the founders have "the team and the ambition to make Strand a category winner."
The signal: At £1 million, the round sits at the small end of the funding scale, in the bottom 10% by size. But it reflects investor appetite for tools that automate scarce human expertise in security — and for building outside London's tech hub.
Read more: Manchester Digital
Image credit: crystallinelamp
