Mantic, an AI forecasting startup, has raised $25 million in a funding round led by Radical Ventures. The company builds AI systems that predict future events, and it has already attracted some of the world's leading hedge funds as early customers for trading support.
The round included participation from Balderton, Thinking Machines Lab, DRW, FT Ventures from the Financial Times, M12 (Microsoft's Venture Fund), Episode 1 Ventures, and Charlie Songhurst. The capital will fund technology expansion and organizational growth as Mantic moves from performance demonstrations toward broader commercial use.
Outpredicting the field
Co-founder and CEO Toby Shevlane pointed to a concrete performance benchmark to back the company's claims. "This summer, for the first time, Mantic out-predicted all 676 humans in the preeminent forecasting tournament," he said. The competition was the Metaculus Cup, held during the summer of 2026.
Forecasting systems work by continuously evaluating data and new information to estimate the probability of future outcomes. For institutional investors, that capability applies directly to economic indicators, geopolitical shifts, corporate events, and market movements where probabilities shift fast. Mantic's ability to beat a large field of human forecasters gives it a tangible proof point when selling into quantitative trading desks.
Commercial traction in financial markets
Shevlane and his co-founder Ben started Mantic specifically to solve forecasting problems. The company identified financial markets as an important early commercial use case. "We want to scale this technology to help people make better decisions. Already, some of the world's leading hedge funds are using Mantic for trading in financial markets," Shevlane said.
The company is now hiring across AI research, engineering, product development, sales, and operations. It is also onboarding new customers, with traders highlighted as a particular area of focus. The funding signals a shift from proving the technology works in competitions to embedding it in live decision-making workflows where money is at stake.
Why this matters for finance and research professionals
Mantic's funding round and disclosed hedge fund adoption suggest that AI forecasting is moving from academic exercise to production-grade tool. For quantitative analysts, risk managers, and CFOs evaluating AI for Finance Courses, the development signals that probabilistic forecasting models are becoming investable infrastructure. The ability to continuously recalibrate probabilities as conditions change has direct applications in portfolio construction, scenario planning, and capital allocation decisions.
For research professionals inside financial institutions, the competitive forecasting benchmark provides a measurable standard. A system that outperforms 676 skilled human forecasters on a structured tournament offers a different kind of evidence than a typical vendor whitepaper. Organizations exploring AI for CFO Training may find the shift toward probabilistic decision-support tools relevant as they assess which capabilities to build or buy.
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