Nettle Raises $4.8M to Tackle Commercial Insurance Inspection Backlogs

Commercial insurance inspections can take months, creating a bottleneck for insurers that need accurate information about properties and other risks before they can make underwriting decisions. London and New York-based insurtech startup Nettle is building software to shorten that process, and has raised $4.8 million in seed funding to expand its platform across the US and Europe.

The oversubscribed round was led by MTech, an investment firm focused on early-stage companies applying artificial intelligence to insurance and financial services. Project A Ventures, which led Nettle's pre-seed round, increased its investment to maintain a larger share.

Other investors include SVV (Sure Valley Ventures), Portfolio Ventures, Ventures Together and several angel investors. Including its earlier pre-seed financing, Nettle has now raised $6.8 million.

The new capital will support expansion in the United States and Europe, as well as hiring across engineering and sales.

Nettle's AI approach to insurance inspections

Founded in 2024 by Jack Miller and Katya Kinane, Nettle is focused on one of the less visible parts of commercial insurance: risk inspection.

Miller, who serves as CEO, and Kinane previously worked together at QuantumBlack, McKinsey's AI division. Their experience spans artificial intelligence, financial services and insurance technology.

Before founding Nettle, Miller worked on AI insurance tools used by more than 100 insurers, according to the source. Kinane led the development of McKinsey's first multi-agent generative AI product for the finance sector.

Nettle's platform is designed to help insurers gather and analyse information before, during and after a physical inspection.

The software uses external data to identify potential risks before an engineer arrives at a site. During an inspection, engineers can capture photos, videos, audio and documents. Nettle then analyses those inputs and helps prepare the resulting risk report.

The platform is designed for several commercial insurance categories, including property, liability, construction and workers' compensation.

That approach is aimed at reducing the amount of manual work required from risk engineers while allowing insurers to retain their existing inspection teams.

The commercial insurance inspection bottleneck

Nettle says commercial insurers can face inspection backlogs of up to six months. The company also estimates that 40% of risk engineers could retire by 2030, although the source notes that Nettle has not provided evidence for that particular figure.

The broader concern is easier to understand. Commercial insurance inspections depend heavily on specialist professionals who visit properties, document potential risks and prepare detailed reports for insurers.

When demand for inspections grows faster than the available workforce, insurers can face delays.

Nettle's software is designed to address both sides of the problem. It can help engineers prepare before arriving at a site and automate parts of the documentation and reporting process after the inspection.

The company says its platform allows insurers to complete inspections five times faster. However, a pilot with Allianz Türkiye in April 2026 found inspections were up to three times faster, according to the source.

That distinction matters because the performance of an AI insurance platform ultimately needs to be measured in real customer deployments rather than headline claims.

From risk assessment to prevention

Nettle's ambitions extend beyond simply making inspections faster.

According to co-founder Katya Kinane, insurers are increasingly interested in using inspection data for prevention and customer retention. Instead of treating risk inspection as a one-time process used to support underwriting, insurers can potentially use the information to identify problems and help policyholders reduce the likelihood of future losses.

The company is also making its platform available to agents and policyholders.

This could allow people without formal risk-engineering experience to gather relevant information themselves, expanding the amount of risk data available to insurers.

CEO Jack Miller described the company's goal as removing the limits created when insurers can only act on risks their teams have the capacity to understand.

The shift from inspection to prevention is particularly relevant to commercial insurance because identifying a risk before an incident can potentially be more valuable than simply processing the same information after a loss.

Still, the model has questions that Nettle will need to answer as it scales. The source notes that there is currently limited data on how agent-led and policyholder-led inspections perform when a major loss occurs.

Customers and industry adoption

Nettle already counts Allianz and Brotherhood Mutual among its customers.

The company also participated in Guidewire's Insurtech Vanguards program in July 2025, providing an opportunity to demonstrate its technology within a wider insurance technology ecosystem.

Its customer relationships will be important as Nettle moves beyond pilots and early deployments. Insurance technology companies often face long sales cycles because insurers need to evaluate technology against regulatory requirements, existing systems, operational workflows and the potential impact on claims and underwriting.

Nettle's challenge will therefore not simply be proving that AI can process inspection information. It will need to show insurers that the software delivers reliable results and creates enough operational value to justify ongoing contracts.

Why MTech led the funding round

MTech's investment gives Nettle backing from an investor with a specific focus on insurance and financial services.

Founded in 2018 by Kevin and Brian McLoughlin, MTech invests in early-stage businesses using AI across insurance and financial services.

Kevin McLoughlin, MTech's founder and managing partner, said the firm was impressed by Nettle's progress and the founders' experience in an area of insurance that has traditionally received less attention from startups.

That specialist focus is relevant to Nettle because commercial insurance is a complex market. Understanding the workflow of insurers, brokers, agents and risk engineers can be as important as the underlying AI technology.

The round also gives Nettle additional backing from Project A Ventures, which had previously led the company's pre-seed financing and increased its investment in the latest round.

Nettle's position in AI insurance

Nettle is entering a growing insurance technology market where several companies are approaching underwriting and risk from different directions.

New York-based Beagle Labs, for example, raised $4.1 million in pre-seed funding in September 2026 and combines AI with a network of more than 7,000 field inspectors.

Honeycomb has taken a different approach, developing an underwriting model that does not rely on physical inspections, according to Fortune.

Nettle's model sits between those approaches. It does not seek to eliminate insurers' own engineers. Instead, it provides software designed to make their existing workflows faster and extend the amount of information that can be processed.

The wider AI insurance market is also attracting significant investment. Mordor Intelligence estimates that the AI in insurance sector could reach $26.3 billion in 2026.

The opportunity spans underwriting, claims, fraud detection, customer service, risk assessment and prevention. Nettle is focusing on a narrower part of that market, but one where specialist knowledge and physical-world data remain important.

What comes next for Nettle

The $4.8 million seed round gives Nettle the capital to expand its presence across the US and Europe and build out its engineering and sales teams.

The company plans to reach 12 full-time employees, alongside dedicated accounting and finance teams.

Its next phase will likely be less about demonstrating that AI can assist with inspections and more about proving that insurers will continue paying for the technology after initial pilots.

That means customer retention, repeat usage and measurable improvements in inspection speed and risk management will become increasingly important indicators of progress.

Nettle is targeting a very specific problem in commercial insurance: the gap between the amount of risk insurers need to understand and the number of specialists available to inspect it.

If the company can turn its AI-assisted inspection workflow into a dependable tool for insurers, agents and policyholders, it could make a traditionally slow part of commercial insurance significantly more responsive.

For now, the $6.8 million raised across its pre-seed and seed rounds gives Nettle room to test that thesis across two major insurance markets.