Souk lands $1.6M to turn inactive B2B partners into revenue

UK-based B2B software startup Souk has secured $1.6 million in pre-seed funding to create its AI-powered partner management platform. The investment round was spearheaded by Sure Valley Ventures, with support from Antler, Fuel Ventures, and strategic angel investors from the B2B software sector. Established in July 2025, Souk is creating an AI Partner Manager, Coco, to assist companies in managing and reactivating partner relationships.

Many businesses rely on partnerships for market access but continue to handle these connections through manual methods like spreadsheets and emails. Souk observes that companies often concentrate on acquiring new partners while dormant relationships go unnoticed. Industry research indicates that a significant portion of partner-generated revenue stems from just a few active partners, presenting an opportunity to maximize value from current networks.

The core of Souk's platform is Coco, an autonomous AI agent that handles tasks throughout the partnership lifecycle, such as identifying partners, maintaining engagement, monitoring performance, and managing payouts. This aims to lessen the burden of managing partner programs and encourage more active participation from the existing network.

Initial tests of Coco have discovered partnerships with a potential seven-figure sales pipeline and led to contracts with several unicorn companies. The platform has also cut down on the manual effort involved in partner acquisition. Despite the importance of partnerships in modern business, the software solutions supporting them have remained largely unchanged.

Companies invest significant effort in signing partners but often find that 80% of them become inactive. Souk aims to address this issue by building Coco to handle the heavy lifting, keep partners active, and convert dormant networks into reliable revenue sources. CEO and co-founder Leo Crowe emphasized the platform's potential to transform partner management, stating, "With Souk, we are building Coco to handle the heavy lifting, keeping partners active and turning dormant networks into predictable revenue engines."

The newly raised funds will be dedicated to product development, with a focus on enhancing Coco's core architecture and refining the AI-based approach to partnership management.