Grand, an AI-driven trade credit intelligence platform, secures $5 million in funding, targeting the $15 trillion real economy market

London, UK —

The Dublin team that sold WhenThen to Advent International launches an AI platform to help businesses identify trading partners in a $15 trillion industry.

London, March 26, 2026 — Grand, an AI-powered trust network for physical industries such as construction, manufacturing, and trade supply, today announced $5 million in pre-seed funding led by 20VC, with participation from NAP (formerly Cavalry Ventures) and Firedrop. The funding will support Grand's expansion in the UK and accelerate product development to build an intelligent payment network that helps businesses assess and onboard trading partners and transact with trust and confidence.

Founded by payments industry veterans

Grand was co-founded by Kirk Donohoe (CEO), Dave Brown, and Eamon Doyle. The three have worked together for over a decade, having worked at Mastercard Labs and co-founded the payment orchestration platform WhenThen, which was acquired by Advent International in 2022. Grand is their third entrepreneurial venture together.

Industry pain points

B2B trade in industries such as global construction, manufacturing, and trade supply exceeds $15 trillion, but the credit decisions underpinning this trade—whether to extend payment terms to a trade account, whether to pay upfront before goods are delivered, whether to increase or extend credit limits, or even whether to transact at all—still rely on fragmented data that is often months or even years out of date. Creditors make high-stakes decisions based on outdated snapshots.

In the UK, statutory accounts filed with Companies House can be over a year old by the time they are used. In 2023, the UK recorded over 25,000 corporate insolvencies, the highest in three decades, and unsecured creditors in these insolvencies typically recover almost nothing.

The cost is not only in downside risk. When businesses lack reliable, real-time intelligence about trading partners, they move slowly, delaying customer onboarding, limiting order sizes, or avoiding partnerships altogether. Suppliers under-credit customers that are already growing, while buyers hesitate because they cannot adequately assess suppliers. The result is lost opportunity across the entire trade chain.

Grand's current product

Grand Profile is the company's first product, showcasing a business's behavioral patterns over time, not just its reported data. Rather than providing a static snapshot, it offers a continuous view, alerting early when risk rises or when signals of improving reliability appear.

Businesses use Grand to assess their trading partners, whether customers, suppliers, or service providers. The platform helps teams evaluate before establishing new relationships and continuously monitors existing relationships for signs of growth, enabling proactive credit expansion to customers trending in the right direction.

Investor perspectives

"Businesses in global trade are making high-stakes decisions based on outdated data and processes—who to work with, who to pay, who to trust. Kirk, Dave, and Eamon have already built and successfully exited together in the payments space, they understand the infrastructure layer, and Grand is their most ambitious attempt yet."

— Kieran Hill, 20VC

"Grand's model creates compounding value: every trade interaction deepens the network's intelligence. This defensibility is rare in the B2B space."

— Claude Ritter, NAP

CEO comments

"Businesses don't need another credit score. They need continuous intelligence about how partners actually behave. Poor credit intelligence misprices not only risk but also opportunity. By applying AI to fragmented and often unstructured data in industries like construction and trade supply, we can move from hindsight to foresight—letting payments and capital flow based on true trust."

— Kirk Donohoe, Co-founder and CEO of Grand

Long-term vision

Grand believes that a shared trust network can lay the foundation for a broader payment network in industries such as construction and trade supply, enabling businesses to discover partners, extend credit, and transact with greater trust and confidence.

Use of funds

The funding will be used to expand Grand's engineering and data science teams, broaden European market coverage, and deepen the platform's AI capabilities. Grand is currently available to customers in UK manufacturing, construction wholesale and supply, and trade services.