Case study 03 / 03
~10 years
Continuous Leahy family involvement
£680m
Series C round valuation (Oct 2022)
5 continents
UK origin, now global
ConnexAI is a leading UK AI lab, founded in 2015 by brothers Nick and Richard Mealey. The company is recognised as a major contributor to the UK AI eco system with their best-in-class proprietary voice recognition and cloning models.
The Leahy family has been a shareholder and supporter of the business continuously since 2016 — a tenure of 10+ years, during which Connex has grown from a small UK lab to a global operation serving five continents with over 600 employees, including a Series C round in October 2022 at a £680m valuation.
In 2016 the Leahy family invested in Connex One. Connex was recently founded, with Nick and Richard Mealey running the business from Manchester.
The investment was structured to keep the founders firmly in operational control — the Mealey brothers continue to lead the company as CEO and CTO today, almost a decade later. The Leahy family has remained a shareholder throughout.
In October 2022, Connex closed a £93 million Series C round led by GP Bullhound, taking a minority stake and providing capital to scale the company's international expansion and AI product investment.
Long-tenured shareholder. The Leahy family has now been a Connex shareholder for approximately 10 years, through multiple stages of growth and through the company's transition into AI products and a global operating footprint.
Founder-friendly structure. The investment preserved the founders' operational leadership and their ability to run the company through a long growth journey. Nick and Richard Mealey remain in their original roles today, almost a decade on.
Retail and consumer-network context. Terry's experience scaling Tesco's customer-facing systems was directly relevant for a business whose end customers are themselves consumer-facing brands attempting to scale customer engagement at very large volumes.
ConnexAI is currently a private company, headquartered in Manchester with offices across the UK, US, EMEA, Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America, and approximately 600 employees.
The Leahy family remains a supportive and engaged shareholder.
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