Steffen Wulff Petersen

Steffen Wulff Petersen co-founded Sona in London in 2021 and runs it as chief executive. His co-founders are Ben Dixon, its chief technology officer, and Oli Johnson, its chief financial officer. Sona sells workforce management software to employers whose staff work shifts: restaurants, hotels, care homes, shops and logistics operators. It built its early business with UK hospitality and social care customers such as Gleneagles and Estelle Manor, as reported by TechCrunch.

From rota app to platform

Sona’s product now covers AI demand forecasting and scheduling, labor analytics, HR, payroll, compliance and business intelligence. It also offers Forge, a tool that lets large customers build their own applications and workflows on top of the platform. When it raised a $27.5m Series A led by Felicis in May 2024, the company reported revenue growth of more than 400% in 2023 and more than 100,000 frontline workers using its app.

Petersen has kept the company aimed at large employers with complex operations rather than small businesses, TechCrunch reported at the time. That choice is visible in its customer list, which includes Popeyes and Tao Group.

A $45m bet on AI

In April 2026 Sona raised a $45m (£34m) Series B led by N47, with Felicis, Northzone, Gradient and Italian Founders Fund returning. The round took total funding past $100m (£75m). The money is for expansion in the US, run from New York, and for bringing forward product capabilities the company had planned to build over many years.

“Every other enterprise software category has been transformed by AI, but the tools managing the world’s largest workforce are still fundamentally the same systems that were built 20 years ago,” Petersen said. “We had a ten-year plan. AI made it a one-year plan.”

Why it matters to UK employers

For UK hospitality, retail and care operators, staff costs are usually the largest line they can control, and scheduling decisions feed straight into margins, service levels and staff turnover. A single system that forecasts demand, sets shifts, tracks hours and pays staff may cut the reconciliation work between operations, HR and payroll teams. For IT buyers, Forge is the notable part: it suggests workforce software is becoming something customers build on, not just configure.

Petersen has taken a product shaped by UK care homes and hotels and turned it into a platform backed by more than $100m. The US push will show how far it travels, and its investors are betting it will.