Portia AI, a startup enabling production-grade AI agents with human oversight, has raised £4.4 million in funding led by General Catalyst. The London-based company is tackling one of AI’s biggest challenges: giving developers the ability to predict, control, and authenticate autonomous agents as they interact with real-world apps and data.
While AI agents are gaining traction, many pilot projects have stalled due to poor visibility into how agents operate. Without clear auditing, human oversight, or secure access to business tools, teams in regulated sectors like finance often avoid deploying agents in production.
Portia AI addresses these gaps with an open-source framework and cloud platform that enables developers to build secure, auditable, and collaborative agents. The new funding will fuel platform development and expand the company’s engineering team.
Portia AI is a Platform for Predictable and Secure AI Agents
Portia AI was founded by Emma Burrows and Mounir Mouawad, who previously held leadership roles at Stripe. Emma built Stripe UK’s engineering team and led digital development at Charlotte Tilbury, while Mounir helped launch Google Pay in 30 markets and drove Stripe’s EMEA expansion.
The pair launched Portia AI to help developers build agents that behave like transparent partners, not black boxes. “Deploying agents in production today is hard. We want to democratise access to reliable agent infrastructure,” said Emma Burrows, Portia’s CTO.
Their platform includes:
- Step-by-step agent plans: Each plan outlines tools, input, and expected output, improving traceability.
- Clarification requests: Agents pause to seek human input when facing ambiguous tasks or sensitive decisions.
- Just-in-time authentication: Agents access APIs securely only when needed, with token refresh for safety.
- Auditability: All agent activities are tracked and stored for review and compliance.
- Extensibility: Developers can add tools, customise agent logic, and use a growing catalogue of pre-built integrations (e.g., GitHub, Slack, Zendesk).
Designed for Regulated and Business-Critical Use Cases
Portia AI’s core pillars—predictability, control, and authentication—make it ideal for sectors like fintech, where compliance and transparency are non-negotiable. By blending human-in-the-loop processes with AI automation, Portia ensures agents remain within safe, auditable boundaries.
Juliet Bailin, Partner at General Catalyst, said: “Portia AI is laying the foundation for a new era of intelligent automation. Emma and Mounir have the clarity, credibility, and vision to build a generational company.”
Literary Inspiration with a Tech Twist
The startup’s name comes from Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Portia, a spider species protagonist in the sci-fi novel, symbolises innovation, resilience, and connection—qualities the founders say mirror their mission to evolve AI with responsibility and collaboration.
With this funding, Portia AI is gearing up to launch several new features in 2025, aiming to reshape the future of AI-powered business operations—one controllable agent at a time.
