Riplo raises £2.3M to reinvent consulting with AI
London-based startup Riplo has secured £2.3 million in pre-seed funding to build an AI-powered operating system designed specifically for consulting firms. The round is led by Berlin-based venture capital firm Cherry Ventures, underscoring growing investor conviction that the $1 trillion global consulting market is ripe for technology-led disruption.
From elite analytics and private equity to startup execution
Riplo was founded by former talent from QuantumBlack — the advanced analytics arm of McKinsey — and private equity firm Hg Capital. This blend of experience in high-end consulting, data science and investment gives the team a close-up understanding of how traditional consulting workflows operate, and where they break down.
The company’s mission is to modernise consulting by replacing fragmented tools, manual slide-building and email-driven collaboration with a unified, AI-native platform that can handle complex, multi-step client projects.
AI operating system with traceable, agent-driven workflows
At the core of Riplo’s vision is an AI operating system that orchestrates agent-driven workflows. Instead of consultants manually stitching together research, analysis and documentation, AI agents will coordinate tasks, surface insights and maintain a clear audit trail of every step taken.
The platform is being built with traceability as a core feature, addressing one of the biggest concerns consulting firms have with adopting AI tools: the need to understand how conclusions were reached. By logging data sources, prompts, intermediate outputs and decisions, Riplo aims to make AI-assisted work defensible to clients, partners and regulators.
Targeting a $1T market under pressure to evolve
The global consulting industry, valued at around $1 trillion, faces mounting pressure to deliver faster, more data-driven and more cost-effective work. Firms are experimenting with generative AI, but many lack an integrated system that can safely scale these capabilities across teams and practices.
With its fresh capital, Riplo plans to expand its engineering and product teams in London, deepen integrations with existing consulting toolchains, and pilot its AI operating system with early adopter firms. If successful, the startup could redefine how strategy, transformation and due diligence projects are run, setting a new standard for AI-native consulting operations.