Dragonfly launches with £2.6M to help businesses find the right software through its AI discovery platform

Drowning in a sea of AI tools has become the new normal for businesses. Every week brings another wave of software launches, each claiming to be essential. Sorting through the noise takes weeks, and the wrong pick can set a company back months. Dragonfly wants to change that.

The London-based AI startup came out of stealth today with a £2.6 million ($3.5M) pre-seed round and the public launch of its AI-powered software discovery platform. The round was led by Episode 1, with participation from Dreamcraft, Portfolio Ventures, and angels including QuantumBlack founder and CTO Sam Bourton and Bolt founder and CEO Markus Villig.

Dragonfly was founded in December 2024 by Sean King and Sven Sabas, who met five years ago while working at insurtech unicorn Zego. As they grew Zego’s tech team from 15 to 300 people, they experienced firsthand how a company’s choice of technology can shape its fate. They spent months digging through biased reviews, outdated documentation, and endless demos, trying to piece together reliable tech stacks. Dragonfly is the product they wish they’d had back then.

London-Based Startup Dragonfly Wants to End Software Decision Chaos, Raises £2.6M in Funding to Launch AI-Powered Discovery Platform

At the heart of the platform is a massive dataset — more than 250,000 software products and growing — pulled from trusted sources and constantly updated. Users can interact with Dragonfly through a conversational AI tool that’s free to use starting today. Instead of scrolling through marketplaces or sitting through lengthy pitches, users can simply ask questions in plain language and receive curated recommendations, complete with explanations. Whether it’s picking the best project management software for a small team or mapping out a secure, compliant architecture for a new fintech product, Dragonfly aims to give clear answers within seconds.

Sven Sabas, co-founder at Dragonfly, said: “We’ve spent our careers building startups, and we learned firsthand that a company’s success is tied to the technology it chooses. These decisions can make or break products, and often shape the long-term fate of an entire business. As seasoned engineering and data leaders, we’ve built tech infrastructure from the ground up, making tough, high-stakes calls along the way.”

Sabas added, “We didn’t always get things right. Tech moves quickly, but there’s a lack of reliable, up-to-date guidance to make these critical decisions. That gap revealed a huge opportunity for us to help organisations unlock their true potential and embrace modern tools with confidence in the age of AI. We’re building Dragonfly to be the technology companion we always wished we had – one that empowers every company to make faster, better choices about the software they use to build and scale.”

From late 2025, Dragonfly plans to roll out its enterprise offering. The platform will use “digital fingerprinting” to map a company’s software stack, then provide tailored recommendations to strengthen and evolve it. The team of 12 — which includes several former colleagues from Zego, Peppy, and Permutive — will use the pre-seed funding to expand the dataset, develop new features, and bring more talent on board.

Hector Mason, General Partner at Episode 1, said: “Before Dragonfly, it was almost impossible to gather enough context about software tools to truly understand their capabilities, and whether they fit seamlessly within an existing stack. By solving this critical problem, made even more urgent with the rapid adoption of AI, Dragonfly has the potential to make every company on the planet operate more effectively.”

Sam Bourton, co-founder and CTO at QuantumBlack, added: “I first met Sean and Sven after having spent three days with 150 CIOs and CTOs, witnessing firsthand the mounting complexity of the modern tech and data landscape. The explosion of GenAI and agentic systems has amplified the problem – leaders face a firehose of requests for new AI tools, with a thousand flowers blooming across their organisations, each demanding attention and resources. Taking stock of their existing tech stack, evaluating options, and managing security, dependencies, and integrations has never been harder.

“What struck me about Sean and Sven wasn’t just their willingness to tackle this problem head-on; it was their embrace of its full complexity. Their depth of thinking and meticulous attention to detail set them apart. They’re not looking for quick fixes or superficial solutions; they’re building something fundamental. I’m excited to watch Dragonfly’s vision unfold – this is exactly what our industry needs.”

Dragonfly is betting that better decisions about software will no longer require weeks of manual research or expensive consultants. With its dataset, conversational interface, and upcoming enterprise features, the startup wants to give businesses a clearer path through the noise — and a faster way to build the right tech foundations.

DragonFly Team (Credit: DragonFly)