Sona Raises £35.1 Million in Series B Funding to Boost AI for Frontline Businesses
Sona, an AI platform designed for real economy industries, has successfully raised £35.1 million in a Series B funding round. This investment is led by N47, with participation from existing investors including Felicis, Northzone, Gradient, and Italian Founders Fund. The total funding for Sona now exceeds £78 million, marking a significant milestone for the company.
Accelerating Expansion and Innovation
The new funding will accelerate Sona's expansion into the United States and bring forward a decade of planned platform capabilities to customers in a matter of months. Originally, Sona had a ten-year product vision, but advancements in AI have compressed this timeline into a one-year execution plan. This rapid evolution aims to transform how frontline organisations operate.
Transforming Frontline Workforce Management
Real economy sectors, such as hospitality, retail, healthcare, and logistics, employ hundreds of millions of workers and represent a multi-billion-pound software market. However, these businesses often rely on disconnected legacy systems. Sona addresses this by providing an AI-powered platform that integrates scheduling, HR, payroll, and business intelligence into a cohesive system.
Sona's AI-driven forecasting and scheduling tools help companies like Popeyes and Tao Group optimise staffing. By analysing real-time data on bookings, revenue, weather, and historical shift patterns, Sona builds bottom-up models that predict operational needs and identify improvements. This approach eliminates the need for traditional time-and-motion studies, which are often costly and inaccurate.
Enhancing Business Efficiency and Savings
The platform not only increases sales and improves customer experience but also delivers multi-million-pound labour savings. In an era of rising costs and competition, these efficiencies are crucial for business sustainability. Sona acts as the primary system of record, enabling organisations to build bespoke agent-driven applications through its recent launch, Forge.
Forge is an enterprise AI application builder that allows businesses to create custom software using AI. This software is automatically and securely deployed, fully integrated with core data, analytics, and reporting systems. It enables companies to adopt best-in-class solutions for standard functions while developing tailored software for unique operational areas.
Leadership Perspectives on AI and Growth
Steffen Wulff Petersen, co-founder and CEO of Sona, commented, "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. We had a ten-year plan. AI has turned it into a one-year plan. The next generation provides the infrastructure and agentic layer that organisations build on, giving them the ability to create exactly the software their business needs."
Matthew Cowan, General Partner at N47, added, "In a global market supporting billions of workers, AI presents a unique opportunity to replace outdated frontline tools and introduce a new way of operating across the real economy. Sona has developed a leading, end-to-end AI-native product for workforce management, with best-in-class capabilities that position it as the operational foundation these organisations run on."
About Sona
Sona is headquartered in London, with a growing presence in New York. The company is backed by investors including N47, Felicis, Northzone, and Gradient. Its AI platform combines regulated workforce infrastructure with an operational data layer, helping large organisations run more efficient operations at scale while delivering better service.
