22one, Ex-Detective's UK Police AI, Nears $400M Valuation

22one, a London stealth startup building AI for police forces, has reached a valuation of around $400 million on an undisclosed round, the Financial Times reported. Sequoia, General Catalyst, Lux Capital and Creandum are the named investors.

The founder is Steven Richardson, "a former detective chief superintendent at Merseyside Police until 2021." His path after leaving the force runs through two names a reader will recognise. He became the UK policing lead at Amazon Web Services, then went to Palantir, before co-founding Riven, which the reporting describes as "a company that makes AI software to find and remove personal data from police documents."

NEC Software Solutions later bought Riven. According to techfundingnews, Riven's DocDefender "was used by almost half of UK police forces, with a pilot reaching 92% accuracy and saving more than 9,500 officer and staff hours each year."

The timing is pointed. The UK government wants 43 police forces to start using AI, and PoliceAI launched in June with £75 million set aside over three years to fund pilot schemes in up to 10 police forces to process digital evidence, with a full rollout expected in 2027. Palantir's own pilot programmes have been met with resistance. 22one's round joins a run of venture money into police tech that our surveillance tracker has logged 44 times in the past 90 days.

Two things the FT does not pin down: how much 22one actually raised, or what the company ships beyond AI tools for police workflow.