Rightbrain AI, a Newcastle-founded tech start-up, has raised £3m in a round led by Manchester-based PXN Ventures to help SMEs and mid-market firms overcome the barriers preventing them from deploying AI.
The platform helps B2B services businesses, including marketing agencies, recruitment firms and professional services firms, build and deploy AI agents without the overheads of full-scale digital transformation.
Rightbrain acts as a software bridge, enabling access to leading AI models, including those from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, within their existing combination of tools, such as CRMs or Google Workspace. Teams can then use AI without changing the way they work.
This also means that repetitive work like researching leads, processing onboarding information, analysing customer feedback, and reviewing compliance documentation becomes faster and more consistent.
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Many organisations using readily-available AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT face challenges around compliance, data security and integration with legacy systems. Previously, the only solution appeared to be investing in costly infrastructure and lengthy proof-of-concepts to build bespoke AI tools. Rightbrain’s platform is purpose-built to provide such organisations a path forward that is both secure and compliant.
Specialists work directly with customers to understand their needs, then deliver agents on an ‘agents-as-a-service’ basis, ensuring the right AI solutions are built and that they improve over time.
The business is also expanding its partner network, allowing technology consultancies and digital agencies to use the platform as white-label AI infrastructure. They can therefore build and deploy tailored agents for their own clients without developing the underlying systems from scratch. Rightbrain says this can shorten the time it takes for partners to bring AI products to market by six to nine months.
The £3m investment round was led by NPIF II – PXN Equity Finance, which is managed by PXN Ventures as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II. Existing investors Salica and NYDIG also participated, alongside four new angel investors.
Rightbrain will use the funding to make strategic hires to support increasing customer demand and scale its partner programme, both in the UK and internationally. The business will also deploy its own tool to identify, qualify and convert new customers, and maximise efficiency at every step of its operations.
Peter Cheyne, Rightbrain AI co-founder, said: “Businesses are under pressure to adopt AI, but many are finding that the real challenge isn’t accessing the technology but actually deploying it safely and effectively. We’re helping traditional B2B services evolve into AI-native businesses by embedding agents into their core workflows. This removes friction, giving teams a single platform to build, deploy and govern intelligent tools without needing to rebuild their infrastructure or hire specialist developers.
“We’ve built a foundation for this platform to succeed, working with companies to pilot the tool, and now it’s time to launch it in earnest. This investment from PXN Ventures and our existing backers will allow us to take our platform to more businesses and help them realise the value of AI without the costly transformation.”
Rightbrain was founded in June 2023 by Cheyne and Matt Wells, who together have over 30 years of experience in delivering software for the world’s leading enterprises and operating in regulated environments.
Cheyne previously co-founded Partnerize, which he scaled to over 150 employees and Bottlepay, a regulated fintech that was acquired by NYDIG in 2021. Wells brings expertise in large-scale infrastructure and enterprise AI deployment, having played a key role in the internal rollout of GitHub Copilot following Microsoft’s acquisition.
