Fyld’s US-led raise shows the UK is a proving ground, not the prize

On 18 February 2026 Fyld, the London-founded company whose AI analyzes short videos shot by workers on utility and construction sites, announced a $41m (£30m) Series B. The round was led by Energy Impact Partners (EIP), a New York-based energy investor, with Partech joining through its Growth Impact Fund. The announcement was datelined Houston, Texas.

The figures inside it describe the strategy. Fyld says it grew 82% year over year, and that more than 40% of its total revenue is expected to come from the US by the end of 2026. In 2025 it added US customers including Quanta Services, Emery Sapp & Sons and Sulzer. Shelley Copsey, its chief executive and co-founder, said infrastructure leaders “know reactive management of their frontline workforce has never worked at scale”. At home, it says its platform is deployed on 12 of the UK’s 18 water networks.

That last number is the one UK founders should study. A business that has reached two-thirds of one national regulated market has two choices there: wait for the remaining six customers, or take the proof somewhere bigger.

Stories like this are often told as a loss – a British company, American money, American growth. That reading gets the order of events wrong. The UK market was the asset that made the US raise possible, and founders who treat their home market as a proving ground from the first contract are likely to raise on better terms than those who treat it as the destination.

An anchor customer with skin in the game

Fyld did not begin as a garage startup. It was launched in 2020 by Koru, a venture studio created by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, with support from Boston Consulting Group’s digital ventures arm, and it first tested its technology with SGN, a UK gas distribution network in Ontario Teachers’ infrastructure portfolio.

When Fyld announced a £10m Series A in November 2021, SGN was both investor and customer. John Morea, chief executive of SGN, said at the time that its 12-month field trial had improved risk assessment quality and speed by 75% and saved around £1.4m. That is evidence a later-stage investor can underwrite, because it comes from the customer rather than the vendor.

Few UK founders will have a pension fund’s infrastructure portfolio on tap. But the principle travels. A demanding domestic customer willing to put its results on the record is worth more than several polite pilots, and regulated UK sectors such as water, gas and highways contain exactly those buyers: large, risk-averse and visible to peers abroad.

A US plan from the start

Nothing about the February round is a change of heart. The 2021 Series A release said the money would help Fyld expand into new markets including the US and Scandinavia, and double headcount from 22 to 45. In April 2024, announcing a £12m round led by Ontario Teachers’, the company said it had tripled revenue in 2023 and already counted customers in Europe, North America and South America.

The investors have followed the customers. EIP says it works with more than 80 strategic partners, and Matthias Dill, its managing partner for Europe, tied the deal to demand for energy infrastructure: “The data-center boom and other demand-drivers result in massive build out of energy infrastructure.” For a company selling to infrastructure operators, a lead investor with energy and industrial partners on its books offers routes to buyers as well as capital.

Lessons for founders

There is a less comfortable reading too. A UK company that has reached 12 of 18 water networks has found the edge of one home market, and the next stage of its growth is being financed by a US-led round, with a growing share of revenue expected from the US. Founders in other regulated UK sectors, from energy networks to rail and highways, should expect similar arithmetic: the UK can prove the product, but it may not supply enough customers to justify a growth round on its own.

The practical lessons are specific. Choose a first customer whose sector exists at larger scale in the US. Get its results published, as SGN’s were. Raise from investors who bring buyers in the target market, not only money. And hire for the next stage before it arrives: Fyld lists a new chief revenue officer and a chief product and technology officer among its 2025 milestones, ahead of this round.

The UK did not lose Fyld to America. It built the case that America is now paying for.