The VETTDD 50 · UK startups · 2026AI and data
Dimitri Masin
Co-Founder & CEO, Gradient Labs · gradient-labs.ai ↗
Gradient Labs builds AI agents that handle lending, disputes and customer support inside regulated banks. Its chief executive, an early Monzo hire, says revenue grew 900% in a year
- Series A after June 2026 extension
- $26m
- revenue growth over the year (company figure)
- 900%
- end users across customer deployments
- 32 million
- year Gradient Labs was founded
- 2023
Dimitri Masin is co-founder and chief executive of Gradient Labs, the London company he founded in 2023 with Danai Antoniou, now chief scientist, and Neal Lathia, now chief technology officer. All three came from Monzo. Masin was the bank’s 20th employee and built its data team to more than 100 people. Antoniou created Monzo’s fraud detection system and Lathia built its machine learning infrastructure.
Agents for regulated work
Gradient Labs builds AI agents for financial services operations rather than general-purpose assistants. They handle customer support and specific regulated workflows: lending, from the borrower lifecycle through collections and repayment plans; disputes, from intake and investigation to chargebacks; and know-your-business (KYB) checks on identities and documents. Masin’s argument, set out in June 2026, is that “general-purpose, horizontal AI wouldn’t make a dent” in the operational work banks carry. “We believe that banks should run on auto-pilot,” he wrote.
Its customers include Wise, Monzo, Zego, Pockit, Current, Stash and Rho, and the company says its deployments serve more than 32 million end users.
A doubled Series A
On 1 June 2026 Gradient Labs said it had doubled its Series A to $26m (£19m), with Octopus Ventures and CommerzVentures leading a $13m extension and Redpoint Ventures and Exceptional Capital following on. The company says revenue grew 900% over the previous year. It launched in the US in October 2025, after a £2.8m seed round led by LocalGlobe in August 2024.
Why it matters to UK buyers
UK banks, lenders and payment firms face rising operating costs and close supervision of how they treat customers. Gradient Labs was built specifically for that setting, and its customers include UK names such as Wise, Monzo and Zego. For compliance and operations leaders, it offers a working reference for putting AI agents into processes such as collections and chargebacks, where outcomes are regulated and every step has to be recorded.
Masin has taken what he learned scaling data at Monzo and turned it into a supplier that Wise and Monzo now use for regulated work. With revenue up 900% and fresh funding, Gradient Labs is a UK company that other financial firms are likely to look to as they decide how far AI agents can go.