Wealthy agents and lonely humans - how do you insure events never seen before?
Wealthy agents and lonely humans - how do you insure events never seen before?
Founders Factory Startup Bulletin #67
Insurance has always been the business of predicting the cost of future events. But in a world where some people are predicting the end of humanity within a decade, has pricing risk ever been harder?
AI disruption has reached insurance faster than most people expected. In the past 6 months we have seen insurers race to launch ChatGPT apps, an AI native MGA that’s also an insurer and a re-insurer, and an asset manager and a cafe franchise raise hundreds of millions and reach a £5BN valuation. More recently CEOs have been confronted with the decision to block or not block Muse (Autonomous Digital Agent).
As AI changes the world we live in, Fintech Director, Olly Betts, writes that it’s reshaping what risks people and corporations want to protect against and what data is available to price these risks, assuming there is any relevant data at all.
Also in the Bulletin:
Venture Studio: Call for builders
Critical nature for critical industry - leaning in to the interdependence
Turning a wastestream into a second business with North Australian SeaCulture
Valarian and Uncovr in Sifted AI100
Marrow raise $2M pre-seed
Events
Jobs
How insurance will change after a decade of AI
So how do you “win” in insurance now we operate in a reality that keeps rewriting itself?
Time for a “4 box” to bring clarity to the madness. At Founders Factory we are forecasting future scenarios by mapping ‘speed of adoption’ vs ‘endurance of trust’ of AI.
Using this framework I have identified ten new realities that will emerge over the next decade and have been asking myself, what will I want to protect in these realities and what startup sized opportunities might emerge in response?
I don’t like to think about this stuff in isolation for too long, so my takes are inspired by insights from Founders Factory portfolio founders building at the bleeding edge of insurance including Marrow, Mama Insurance, Meshed.
Venture Studio: Healthcare Sprint 2
The Founders Factory Venture Studio is building a new generation of healthcare companies in partnership with one of the world’s leading industrial healthcare groups.
Sprint 2 is now open. We’re looking for founders to build with us.
Healthcare is under pressure from every direction: ageing populations, chronic disease, stretched hospitals and rising cost. The opportunities aren’t confined to one corner of the system anymore. They run from the first steps of drug development to how care reaches people at home.
We’re backing founders building in:
→ Drug development
→ Cancer diagnosis and treatment
→ Uterine health
→ Pregnancy and early parenthood
→ Brain and mental health
→ Hospital operations and automation
→ Preventive health and longevity
→ Ageing at home
→ Health records and clinical AI
→ Wildcards: problems that sit between categories, or outside them
We’re looking for founders who know the customer, the workflow or the technology from the inside, want to lead full time, and have an idea or thesis in one of these spaces.
Founders receive pre-seed investment, a dedicated studio team across product, design, engineering and GTM from day one, and access to our partner’s experts, technology and customers.
If you’re building in any of these spaces, or thinking about your next venture, we want to hear from you.
Critical nature for critical industry - leaning in to interdependence
‘Double materiality’, a term at the heart of EU emissions reporting a few years ago, explains that businesses impact the environment while simultaneously encountering risks and opportunities from their dependence on it. A mine needs a stable water table to dig, a port needs a stable coastline to sustain years of activity.
Within industrial sectors opportunity lies for tech that leans into interdependence rather than builds around it. This is what we term ‘nature tech’, pioneering startups building in the ‘double materiality’ of venture and nature. If a port uses concrete infrastructure, why shouldn’t that concrete provide a home for marine life which in turn benefits fishing and farming communities? The supportive loop starts to close.
Turning a wastestream into a second business with North Australian SeaCulture
“I’m an engineer by training. Before North Australian SeaCulture, I spent years assessing emerging technologies for mining, oil and gas, and industrial decarbonisation. This meant everything from nuclear power to electrification to niche technologies like turquoise hydrogen. So when people hear I’ve built a seaweed company, they usually assume the hard part was the biology and the interesting part was the engineering. It’s actually the other way around, but it took building a whole second product line out of what the rest of the industry throws away for me to really understand why.”
Valarian and Uncovr in Sifted AI100
Congratulations to Valarian and Uncovr on featuring in the Sifted AI 100.
They feature because of the size of the opportunity they’re chasing, the defensibility of their tech and the speed at which they’re moving.
Valarian builds sovereign AI and high-consequence infrastructure for government, defence, and enterprise organizations
Uncovr builds video-understanding foundation models that analyse live surgical video from robotic, endoscopic, and laparoscopic procedures in real-time.
Marrow raises $2M to connect insurers’ pricing and underwriting systems to AI agents
Marrow, spun out of our venture studio with Aviva, has raised $2m pre-seed led by Insurtech Gateway.
Its platform lets insurers sell to AI shopping agents through a single connection, while keeping control of products, disclosures and transaction records. Live with Aviva since March, it will scale its London team.
Events
🇦🇺 Founders Factory at International Mining and Resources Conference Sydney | October 28th
Founders Factory and Unearthed hosted Funding the Future of Mining Tech, bringing together public capital, corporate venture, founders and miners to tackle why the companies finding deposits, unlocking stranded resources and recovering metal from waste still struggle to reach industrial scale.
Across three panels moderated by Unearthed’s Holly Bridgwater, speakers from the National Reconstruction Fund, Orion Industrial Ventures, Novalith Technologies, Terra AI, Banksia Minerals, BHP Ventures, BHP, IMDEX and Founders Factory Mining Director Tamryn Barker explored where the capital gap lies, who should carry the risk, and what it takes to move from technology development to commercialisation.
🇸🇬 Founders Factory at close-out drinks for SWITCH & Energy Week | October 29th 5.30pm
Following a week of panels, booths and badge scans, Founders Factory is hosting informal drinks on the last night of SWITCH and Singapore International Energy Week, for the founders, investors and corporate innovation teams we’ve met along the way.
This is an opportunity to share what you’ve learned from the week and hear from others on what they’re working on.
🇦🇺 Perth Residency Week | November 2nd-6th
Next week Founders Factory team, founders and partners come together for our bi-annual residency week, for pitches, commercialisation, pilots and networking.
Welcome to our Mining Tech Cohort 5 with Rio Tinto: Cascade Geomatics, Determinant Materials, Inc., blueprint, NanduX, Fieldstone Bio
Welcome to our Nature Tech Cohort 5 with the Government of Western Australia: Byssal, Myco Metals, PROXGRID, Living Oceans, Rare Flora, Clear Carbon
Job Openings
Founder & CEO, Project Amber (Bangkok) | Apply here
With ExpresSo NB, the innovation arm of Thai national energy company PTT, we’re building clean energy startups out of Bangkok. Project Amber turns Thailand’s burned rice straw into verified carbon removal.
Tech Co-Founder / CTO, FaiSabai | Bangkok | Apply here
Also from our venture studio with PTT’s ExpresSo NB, FaiSabai is building the operating system for residential solar as Thailand’s rooftop boom takes off.
If you liked this post from Founders Factory Startup Bulletin, why not share it?
© 2026 Founders Factory
180 Strand, 2 Arundel Street, London WC2R 3DA