An AI start-up which claims to act as an ‘immune system’ for software has landed $17m (£12.6m) in initial funding from backers including the ventures arm of Alphabet-owned Google.

Sky News has learnt that Phoebe, which uses AI agents to continuously monitor and respond to live system data in order to identify and fix software glitches, will announce this week one of the largest seed funding rounds for a UK-based company this year.

The funding is led by GV – formerly Google Ventures – and Cherry Ventures, and will be announced to coincide with the public launch of Phoebe’s platform.

It is expected to be announced publicly on Thursday.

Phoebe was founded by Matt Henderson and James Summerfield, the former chief executive and chief information officer of Stripe Europe, last year.

The duo sold their first start-up, Rangespan, to Google a decade earlier.

Their latest venture is motivated by data suggesting that the world’s roughly 40 million software developers spend up to 30% of their time reacting to bugs and errors.

Financial losses to companies from software outages are said to have reached $400bn globally last year, according to the company.

Phoebe’s swarms of AI agents sift through siloed data to identify errors in real time, which it says reduces the time it takes to resolve them by up to 90%.

“High-severity incidents can make or break big customer relationships, and numerous smaller problems drain engineering productivity,” Mr Henderson said.

“Software monitoring tools exist, but they aren’t very intelligent and require people to spend a lot of time working out what is wrong and what to do about it.”

The backing from blue-chip investors such as GV and Cherry Ventures underlines the level of interest in AI-powered software remediation businesses.

Roni Hiranand, an executive at GV, said: “AI has transformed how code is written, but software reliability has not kept pace.

“Phoebe is building a missing layer of contextual intelligence that can help both human and AI engineers avoid software failures.

“We love the boldness of the team’s vision for a software immune system that pre-emptively fixes problems.”

Phoebe has signed up customers including Trainline, the rail booking app.

Jay Davies, head of engineering for reliability and operations at Trainline, said Phoebe had “already had a real impact on how we investigate and remediate incidents”.

“Work that used to take us hours to piece together can now take minutes and that matters when you’re running critical services at our scale.”

Energy bills are now expected to rise in autumn, a reversal from the previously anticipated price drop, a prominent forecaster has said.

Households will be charged £17 more for a typical annual bill from October as the energy price cap is due to rise, according to consultants Cornwall Insight.

In roughly six weeks, an average dual fuel bill will be £1,737 a year, Cornwall Insights predicted, 1% above the current price cap of £1,720 a year.

The price cap limits the cost per unit of energy and is revised every three months by the energy regulator Ofgem.

Bills had previously been forecast by the consultants to fall in October. Such an increase had not been anticipated until now.

Why are bills getting more expensive?

Charges are predicted to be introduced from October to fund government policies. Measures such as the expansion of the warm home discount, announced in June, will add roughly £15 to an average monthly bill.

The discount will provide £150 in support to 2.7 million extra people this year, bringing the total number of beneficiaries to 6 million.

Volatile electricity and gas prices are also to blame for the forecast increase.

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Turbulent geopolitical events during Ofgem’s observation period for determining the cap, including the unpredictability of US trade policy, have also had an impact, while Israel’s airstrikes on Iran intensified concerns about disruption to gas shipments.

Prices have eased, however, with British wholesale gas costs dropping to the lowest level in more than a year.

Also helping to keep the possible bill rise relatively small is news from the European Parliament that rules on gas storage stocks for the winter would be eased.

Bulk buying and storage of gas in warmer months helps eliminate pressure on supplies when demand is at its highest during cold snaps.

When will bills go down?

A small drop in bills is forecast for January, but it is subject to geopolitical movements, weather patterns and changes to policy costs.

An extra charge, for example, could be added to support new nuclear generating capacity.

The official Ofgem announcement will be made on 27 August.

Consumers could be allowed to attend water company board meetings under new rules proposed by the regulator.

Companies may survey and research customers to understand their views, involve them in decision-making and seek feedback on consumers’ experience.

Under the suggested reforms by regulator Ofwat, customer voices could be heard by making changes to a company’s governing body, the board of directors.

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The obligation to hear billpayers’ views could be met by boards allocating time for consumer matters, arranging for consumer experts to attend, holding open board meetings for the public, or by having an independent director with a consumer focus.

Boards could also comply by arranging for independent consumer experts, such as the Consumer Council for Water (CCW), to regularly attend.

Topics that consumers will have to be consulted on include the cost of bills, performance of key water services, support when things go wrong – like water outages – and the company’s investment priorities.

When decisions likely to materially impact consumers are made, the water company needs to have clear processes to ensure consumers are involved, Ofwat said.

As well as including water users in decision-making, utilities will have to work to understand how decisions impact consumers so those views are taken into account in future decisions.

Seeking this feedback must involve engaging with the new consumer panels being developed by the CCW to hold companies to account, Ofwat’s rules outline.

Why’s this being done?

It’s all part of the government’s aim to rebuild trust in the water sector and to improve accountability, transparency and performance in water firms.

The public has been outraged by record sewage outflows and polluted waterways at a time when senior executives are receiving bonuses and bills are rising.

New powers were granted to regulator Ofwat to clean up the sector, and rules on pay and bonuses were developed and took effect in June.

They’ve already been used to claw back bonuses.

What next?

Stakeholders have until 1 October to respond to the consultation, with Ofwat intending the rules take effect on existing water utilities in April.

Consultations already took place to make the suggested rules with 11,000 responses received from businesses, groups and individuals.

Not all of the replies made their way into the rules. The idea of having MPs and local authorities involved in decision-making, received from “several respondents”, appears not to have been included.

It comes despite the recent announcement of Ofwat being scrapped, as part of a once-in-a-generation review of the sector.

It and the other regulators are to be replaced by one single body.

Ofwat said it was working until new arrangements were in place and continuing to implement rules on remuneration and governance.

How’s it been received?

Environmental charity River Action said to rebuild trust in the industry, the government “needs to go a lot further than tinkering around the edges”.

“We need a complete overhaul of how water companies are owned, financed and governed. That means ending privatisation and instead operating for public benefit,” chief executive James Wallace said.

Industry group Water UK said: “It is important customers are involved in water companies’ decision-making.

“We will continue to work with government on these proposed rules and other vital reforms to secure our water supplies, support economic growth and end sewage entering our rivers and seas.”