Cyber & tech origination engine

Cyber & tech deal flow — without the noise.

Allen is the AI-native origination engine that reads your investment thesis and searches 39 million multi-source private-company records — including official registries such as Companies House — to surface, score and evidence targets across cybersecurity, software and deep tech. Replace manual trawls with thesis-aware search and evidence-linked diligence.

AI-native signals — tech-stack and posture indicators investors actually use

Explainable fit — Thesis Alignment Map with positive and negative signals in context

Evidence you can trust — every claim source-linked and exportable

Off-market breadth — widen the funnel while staying thesis-tight

Evidence you can trust — every claim source-linked and exportable.

private-company records analysed globally

saved per investor, per week

companies diligenced each month

Why niche matters

Generic databases over-index on recycled lists. In cyber and tech, that means overpaying, missed fit and stalled deals. Allen prioritises off-market opportunities aligned to your mandate — breadth to compare, depth to qualify, clarity to move fast.

Avoid overpaying by widening the off-market funnel

Compare niche sub-sectors (from MDR and MSSP to AppSec, IAM, DSPM and OT security) against your exact thesis

Run like-for-like comparisons with consistent, cited data

Keep momentum — no “back to square one” when a lead stalls

Allen prioritises off-market opportunities aligned to your mandate — breadth to compare, depth to qualify, clarity to move fast.

Built by operators, for investors

Founded by a Top 30 UK CISO and engineered by leaders in agentic AI, Allen blends security-grade sourcing with explainable reasoning. You get the transparency diligence teams demand — not a black box.

Top 30 UK CISO

Agentic AI engineering leaders

Why Allen wins for Cyber and Tech

Seven differentiators built for cyber and tech origination — from tech-stack fingerprinting to evidence-linked dossiers your investment committee can interrogate.

Tech-stack fingerprinting

See how each company actually builds and ships: cloud, data, infra, CI/CD, security tooling, common libraries and integrations (where publicly inferable). Useful for buy-and-build adjacency, carve-outs and platform roll-ups.

Cyber posture indicators

Surface signals investors care about: certifications (e.g., ISO/IEC 27001), security pages and trust centres, public incident references, hiring trails in SecOps/DevSecOps, product claims vs. artefacts — all source-linked.

Thesis Alignment Map

Allen lays out why a company fits: positive/negative signals, keywords in context, and reasoning steps — so analysts can challenge, adjust and defend the shortlist.

Evidence-linked dossiers (exportable)

Every claim is accompanied by citations and data exports.

Freshness you can trust

Time-stamped sources and last-seen indicators for key fields. Adjustable staleness flags (typical threshold 3–12 months) so you can focus on live opportunities.

Decision-maker intelligence

Identify relevant leaders — founders, CISOs, CTOs, product heads — and enrich outreach lists. Hand off to your team, or engage our optional contact and campaign support.

Who uses Allen

Private Equity & Growth

Platform build, bolt-ons, LBOs, minority stakes

Corporate Development

Strategic M&A, acqui-hires, market entry

Specialist & Deep-Tech Funds

Frontier, defence-tech, applied AI, cyber

How Allen works

Provide your thesis

Upload your thesis or start from a sector/company seed with exclusions.

Approve the scope

Confirm guardrails, geographies, sub-sectors and output formats — then Start.

Allen searches & reasons

Agentic workflows scan 39M+ records (plus official filings such as Companies House), de-duplicate, rank fit, map competitors and compile decision-makers.

Receive evidence-linked reports

Your shortlist lands in your inbox and CRM with sources, notes and recommended next steps.

Provide your thesis

Upload your thesis or start from a sector/company seed with exclusions.

Approve the scope

Confirm guardrails, geographies, sub-sectors and output formats — then Start.

Allen searches & reasons

Agentic workflows scan 39M+ records (plus official filings such as Companies House), de-duplicate, rank fit, map competitors and compile decision-makers.

Receive evidence-linked reports

Your shortlist lands in your inbox and CRM with sources, notes and recommended next steps.

What you get

Outputs designed for precision origination and thesis alignment.

Thesis-aligned longlist & shortlist with scores and explainability

Company dossiers

: tech stack snapshot, product/positioning cues, go-to-market signals, cyber posture indicators, basic financials (where available), and source links

Comparison tables for like-for-like evaluation across sub-sectors

Export data sources for deeper analysis

Outcomes our clients report

98% reduction in time spent on sourcing and diligence tasks

Thousands of companies reviewed per mandate — without sacrificing rigour

Higher CRM quality with evidence-linked notes analysts can trust

“The results are promising. Information is well sourced; filtering is high quality with logical reasoning; the tech-stack view is a real differentiator; and the thesis map is genuinely helpful.”

— Deep-tech investor, London

Not a generalist database

Old way

Allen way

Retainers for generic lists recycled across buyers

AI-light processes that miss nuanced theses and move slowly

Manual cross-checking across Endole, PitchBook, SourceScrub and others

AI-native, off-market focus aligned to your mandate

Evidence-linked outputs you can audit

Analyst control at every step, without the drudgery

Allen is the AI-native origination engine that finds, scores and evidences off-market cybersecurity, software and deep-tech companies — in minutes, not months.

Led by experts

Dr Runli Guo

CEO & Founder

Former CISO (Gett, Valarian) and Global Head of Digital Cybersecurity Initiatives at Marsh McLennan. Top 30 UK CISO (2022). PhD in AI (NLP), University of Surrey. 16 years’ cybersecurity leadership across payments, gaming, insurance and high tech.

John Adeojo

CTO & Co-Founder

Leader in agentic AI engineering with significant open-source contributions. Experience delivering AI for financial services (NatWest Group, RBS International, HSBC, Shawbrook Bank). MSc in Operations Research & Applied Statistics (Cardiff); BEng (Manchester).

Ray Stanton

Non-Executive Chair

Former leader of the Global System Integrator Division at BT Global Services. Helped set up global cyber resilience programmes with the World Economic Forum; advisory board, Information Security Forum. Founder, White Hat Foundation; Lifetime Achievement Award (2025).

Dr Ali Baghdadi

Board Advisor & CEO Coach

Founder of Aptec, scaled to $2B revenues; later CEO META and SVP at Ingram Micro. Inventor with patents pending in AI and cyber. MSc/PhD, Imperial College London.

Andy Sadler

GTM Advisor

30+ years scaling software and SaaS; Independent Board Advisor to IQ Capital. Pragmatic GTM and operational expertise with multiple successful exits.

Ready to upgrade deal origination?

Join private-equity teams using thesis-aware search and evidence-linked diligence to build genuine proprietary deal flow.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where does your data come from?

From 39M+ multi-source company records blended with official registries (e.g., Companies House), public artefacts, and curated signals. Every output is source-linked so analysts can verify and drill down.

How do you handle data freshness?

Our 39M+ multi-source company dataset refreshes on a monthly cycle so new signals and metadata flow into Allen without manual effort. Companies House feeds update in line with official filings, so statutory changes land as soon as companies submit them.

What does “tech-stack fingerprinting” actually mean?

We infer a company’s stack from observable clues (cloud/services, repos and documentation where public, hiring trails, integrations and partner ecosystems). It’s designed to inform adjacency and integration thinking for buy-and-build.

Are you a database or an agent?

Both — but the value is in the agentic reasoning. Allen interprets your thesis, explains why each company fits (or doesn’t), and produces exportable, audit-ready evidence.

Which geographies and stages do you cover?

Global private companies with a focus on cybersecurity, software and deep tech across venture to mid-market. You can filter by stage, geography and revenue bands where available.

How do you address GDPR and enterprise security?

We operate with GDPR-aligned processing, keep audit trails on sources and transformations, and follow enterprise security practices shaped by leaders who have run security at FTSE/Fortune firms.