Thema secures $6.2M to support mapping of market expansion opportunities for private equity

London-based Thema has secured $6.2 million in funding to enhance how private equity firms assess risk and plan expansion strategies within the dynamic software market. This funding, comprising $4.5 million in pre-seed investment led by Stride.vc and a $1.7 million UK government grant for trustworthy AI development in partnership with the University of Cambridge, addresses critical gaps in traditional investment assessment methodologies. The repricing of software markets has highlighted the limitations of current, often manual and fragmented, approaches used by private equity to evaluate portfolio exposure and expansion opportunities. Thema's Portfolio Expansion Infrastructure aims to provide a continuously updated, holistic view of market structure, moving beyond disconnected tools and individual judgment to inform strategic decisions for investors. This system is designed to help PE firms identify expansion targets, originate new opportunities, and comprehensively assess risk across their portfolios. At the core of Thema's offering is proprietary AI infrastructure, developed with techniques from co-founder Dr. Dimo Angelov, that processes web-scale data to map company clusters, identify market adjacencies, and track evolving market structures over time. This advanced capability provides investors with versioned representations of market dynamics, offering insights into competitive landscapes and potential expansion paths that may be overlooked by conventional data sources. The platform's development, in collaboration with leading private equity firms and a UK government-backed program, seeks to accelerate investor conviction and strengthen investment theses.