Post by DC Cahalane

Planning backlogs are one of the quietest brakes on housing and clean energy in these islands. So it's good to see a sharp team going straight at the problem, a team that we at @SVV (Sure Valley Ventures) are delighted to back. Congratulations to Habs Isabelle Kim and Dermot O'Riordan on raising £2.8m (€3.24m) pre-seed for Xylo, backed by CapitalT, SVV (Sure Valley Ventures) and Common Magic and a host of incredible angel investors. This is the kind of company we love backing at SVV: a sharp, technical team going straight at a deep, unglamorous problem that actually matters. Xylo is deploying AI agents to help local authorities process applications faster and more accurately, augmenting planning officers rather than replacing them. What stands out to me isn't the AI. It's the rigour behind it. 300+ hours shadowing planning officers before writing a line of code. The result: officers saving roughly a day a week, and councils processing 40% more applications per officer each month, at a time when application volumes are climbing. Three things I think matter here: 👤 Augmenting staff rather than replacing them. Humans still make the final call. That's how you earn trust in the public sector. ❤️ Deep customer empathy as a moat. Local authorities don't hand trust out freely, and Xylo has clearly earned it at Leeds City Council. 🇬🇧 🇮🇪A real Irish angle. London-HQ'd and Irish co-founded, with Ireland flagged as the likely first stop beyond Britain given the shared legal framework. More building, faster, with better decisions. That's a win for entrepreneurs and citizens alike. Big thanks to Charlie Taylor and Business Post for covering! #PropTech #GovTech #VentureCapital #Startups https://lnkd.in/degkCimZ