AI agents can write code, draft legal documents, and coordinate complex workflows. But ask one what happened three conversations ago, and it falls apart.

Memory is one of the biggest unsolved problems in autonomous AI systems. And a London startup just raised $23 million to fix it at the database layer.

SurrealDB, the company behind a multi-model, AI-native database, has secured an additional $23 million (£17 million) in Series A extension funding. The round brings the total Series A to $38 million and total investment to date to $44 million, making SurrealDB one of the best-funded database companies in its category.

New investors Chalfen Ventures and Begin Capital joined existing backers FirstMark and Georgian in the extension. Mike Chalfen, founder of Chalfen Ventures who has invested over $300 million in disruptive software startups, will join SurrealDB as a director.

The funding coincides with the launch of SurrealDB 3.0, which the company describes as its most stable, performant, and enterprise-ready release to date.

SurrealDB was founded in 2021 by Tobie Morgan Hitchcock (CEO) and Jaime Morgan Hitchcock (COO). The company is headquartered in London and has around 45 employees. It raised its initial Series A of approximately $15 million in 2024, backed by FirstMark and Georgian.

Tobie Morgan Hitchcock said: "This fresh investment demonstrates a growing level of excitement for our category-defining, developer-friendly database. Chalfen Ventures and Begin Capital have joined this round due to our strong momentum in real-world usage, and clear path to large-scale production."

The core product is a cloud-native, multi-model database built in Rust. What makes it different is that it combines relational, document, graph, time-series, vector, search, geospatial, and key-value data types into a single platform, all queryable through its own language, SurrealQL.

For developers building AI-native applications, this matters because AI agents need a unified view of state: structured data, semantic context, relationships, embeddings, and durable memory. Typically, teams stitch this together across separate relational databases, vector stores, graph engines, and search systems. Context drifts. Memory fragments. Logic breaks.

SurrealDB 3.0 aims to consolidate all of those layers into one engine. The company says it is the only database to enable first-class agent memory and context graphs directly inside the database, so models run next to the data and context stays synchronised.

Mike Chalfen, Founder at Chalfen Ventures, said: "Every compute era requires a new database paradigm. We are in the AI era, but most ambitious enterprise AI projects stall. They need a data platform that makes unprecedentedly large-scale contextual information available to agentic systems, in a way that is synchronised across data sources, fast, and secure. SurrealDB is that platform. It meets the needs of both AI agents and enterprise data governance. It is the best on-ramp for companies looking to get native AI initiatives off the ground, and I believe that it can shape what it means for a business to be agent-ready."

Justin Foley, VP of Engineering at Later (a SurrealDB customer), said: "Every integration you carry is a compounding tax on speed and a ceiling on what you can build. SurrealDB collapses your data infrastructure into one. On that foundation, we built autonomous AI capabilities that would have been impossible on a conventional stack. Simplicity compounds into everything you build next."

What the Funding Is For

The new capital will go towards accelerating product maturity and adoption, with a particular focus on reliability, performance, security, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise readiness. SurrealDB will also expand its team to scale its cloud offering and deepen support for production deployments.

What Is New in SurrealDB 3.0

The 3.0 release transforms SurrealDB from a multi-model database into what the company calls a multi-modal platform for AI agents. Key new features include first-class agent memory and context graphs built directly into the database, the ability to handle structured records alongside images, audio, and documents (all queryable within SurrealQL), vector search and indexing with millisecond-precision retrieval, a new plugin ecosystem called Surrealism for AI-native organisations, custom API endpoints defined directly within the database, and client-side transactions for managing complex workflows.

According to EU-Startups, SurrealDB's expanded Series A positions it within a broader European investment cycle focused on foundational AI infrastructure, with approximately €1.27 billion in disclosed funding flowing into adjacent AI infrastructure, agent, and developer tooling segments across 2025 and 2026.

Why This Matters for UK Founders

If you are building AI applications, the database layer is about to become a much bigger conversation. As Tech Startups put it: models grab headlines, but the data layer may decide who actually ships autonomous systems at scale.

For UK tech founders in particular, there are a few takeaways here.

First, the AI infrastructure layer is attracting serious capital. SurrealDB is not building a chatbot or a wrapper. It is building foundational infrastructure for how AI agents store, retrieve, and reason about data. That is the kind of deep technical moat investors are willing to back at scale.

Second, London continues to produce globally competitive developer tools. SurrealDB sits alongside companies like Anthropic's UK partnership and a growing roster of AI infrastructure startups choosing London as their base.

Third, the "every compute era needs a new database" framing is worth noting if you are thinking about founder-market fit. SurrealDB is not trying to be a slightly better version of what already exists. It is positioning for a category shift, and the funding validates that thesis.

With $44 million in total funding, a 3.0 product launch, and a growing enterprise customer base, SurrealDB is well positioned to become the default data platform for the agent era. And it is being built right here in London.

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