Manchester Digital member Strand Intelligence has closed a £1m seed funding round led by Osney Capital, in a further boost to Greater Manchester's fast-growing cybersecurity sector.
Founded in 2025 and headquartered in Ancoats, Strand is building automation technology for Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) — the investigative work carried out in the aftermath of a security incident. Its platform automates investigations across cloud and endpoint environments, enabling security teams to complete investigations up to five times faster.
The company has an unusual origin story: co-founders Will Poole and Oli Fletcher met as next-door neighbours and first developed the idea for the business chatting over the garden fence.
The new funding will be used to accelerate hiring and product development, with the founders committed to keeping the business rooted in Manchester as it scales.
Oli Fletcher, co-founder, said: "The demand we’re seeing across the market is striking; the need for more rapid, tooling-driven investigation solutions is a clear gap, and companies who have adopted Strand early are already seeing immense benefits across speed, reduced downtime, and consistent, accurate outputs,”
“We are building the company to meet that demand from Manchester outward; having explored technology hubs across the UK, it is the clear leader for talent, ambition and a community that backs its own, and it will remain our home as we expand south, then into EMEA and North America.”
Will Poole, co-founder, said: "After a decade across multiple cybersecurity investigation roles, not much has changed. Ten years of new and improved proactive security software has come out. Security teams have more data than ever, but when things go wrong, which they do at an ever-increasing rate, we fall back, as we always have, on our most important and scarce resource: human expertise.
"That is the problem we built Strand to solve, taking the heavy investigation work off people so their expertise goes where it actually matters."
Adam Cragg, partner at Osney Capital, said: "Strand is tackling one of the most stubborn problems in cybersecurity: how to investigate incidents fast enough to keep pace with threat actors.
"Their platform is a force multiplier that allows a team to investigate complex technical estates, advanced threats and critical incidents — both strengthening security posture and ensuring that, on a business's worst day, they are ready to respond and recover. Will and Oli have the team and the ambition to make Strand a category winner."
