Forward Deployed Engineer

Wonderful AI opens London office and plans to hire hundreds. Wonderful AI, a Dutch-Israeli start-up that helps companies adopt artificial intelligence, has opened an office in London and plans to recruit "hundreds" of people, as it targets businesses that have yet to show measurable returns from the technology. The company's new site is on St Martin's Lane in Covent Garden. Wonderful did not set a timeline for the recruitment. The 18-month-old business was valued at $5bn after raising $550m in a funding round announced on 2 September, backed by investors including Salesforce, Index Ventures and Insight Partners. It now employs more than 700 people across 35 countries. Free newsletters The stories that matter to UK business, straight to your inbox. Jason du Preez, Wonderful's UK chief operating officer, said the funding gave the company the "muscle to invest materially in this market... we see a huge market opportunity in the UK". Targeting the gap on returns. Du Preez said many UK companies had moved quickly on AI but had yet to demonstrate what it had delivered. "Many companies here in the UK actually have very active AI agendas and were very early to adopt some of the tools but are yet to show tangible, coherent stories on ROI [return on investment]," he said. Research published by Accenture in April found that only one in ten UK organisations had successfully scaled AI or embedded it into core operations. Matt Prebble, chief executive of Accenture UK and Ireland, has since said that nine in ten companies are still waiting for AI to pay off. Adoption itself has risen. According to the Office for National Statistics, the proportion of UK businesses with 10 or more employees using at least one AI technology rose from around 12 per cent to around 35 per cent between late 2023 and 2026. A separate PwC study found that UK businesses were falling behind on AI investment and returns compared with global leaders. How the model works. Wonderful places its engineers directly inside client businesses, where they help design custom AI software on top of the company's own platform. That platform sits between businesses and the underlying AI models. The platform is model agnostic, meaning it can route queries to a range of different AI models. "We work with all the frontier companies and we enable our customers to choose which models are used for specific purposes," du Preez said. Wonderful's router decides which model is best suited to a given task, taking into account factors such as data sensitivity and cost. The company also trains clients to build and expand their technology systems independently, and allows all customers to export any intellectual property built on the platform, which it says protects against vendor lock-in. "We're not trying to create some sort of long-term dependency on Wonderful," du Preez said. "I think that provides strong support for the sovereignty story, in that we're giving customers choice and no lock-ins." Regulated sectors in focus. Du Preez said Wonderful was "agnostic to sector", but added that he was "very excited about the regulated industries", including insurance, banking and telecoms, as well as life sciences and healthcare. The opening adds to a run of AI companies expanding in the capital. OpenAI earlier this year leased its first permanent London office in King's Cross, with capacity for 544 staff. Jamie Young. Jamie Young is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, covering SME finance, employment law and Westminster policy since 2016. He has reported on every Budget and Autumn Statement since 2018, helped make sense of the 'covid era' and the bounce-back loan scheme from launch through the fraud investigations, and broke the magazine's coverage of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Business Matters straight from completing his BA in Administration from Exeter University and is NCTJ-qualified. Reach him at [email protected]

Bayern in Wonderful tie-up with enterprise AI firm. Wonderful will initially collaborate with the German soccer giants to improve their fan service offerings. German soccer giants - and Bundesliga champions - Bayern Munich have brought in artificial intelligence firm Wonderful as a new club partner for the next three seasons. Through a deal unveiled yesterday, Wonderful becomes the official enterprise AI partner of the Bavarian giants, who have won 13 of the last 14 Bundesliga titles. The deal - running through 2026-27, 2027-28, and 2028-29 - revolves around Wonderful's products and technologies being used to enhance the club's array of fan services. This will involve Wonderful integrating with the club's existing matchday fan service systems to "enable secure enterprise AI functionalities within [Bayern's] technology ecosystem." Wonderful will, at first, work to implement an AI assistant that works to help Bayern fans with ticketing issues on matchdays, allowing the Munich club to handle time-sensitive fan requests in a timely manner. More and more major European soccer clubs are now implementing artificial intelligence solutions in their digital ecosystems in order to enhance and smooth over the online experience for their fans. Rouven Kasper, board member for marketing and sales at Bayern Munich, commented: "Our partnership with Wonderful allows us to leverage the potential of enterprise AI with the help of AI agents and support our teams in providing fast and reliable service when it matters most - starting on match day." In terms of recent Bayern commercial activity, mid-August saw the Bundesliga champions unveil the extension of their deal with home appliance brand Miele on a multi-year basis. Deutsche Telekom is the front-of-shirt sponsor for Bayern's men's team, while that side's kit supplier is Adidas. Bar Winkler, Wonderful's chief executive and co-founder, added: "Wonderful is delighted to partner with FC Bayern, who are driving forward their ambitions in the field of Enterprise AI. FC Bayern sets standards for excellence on the pitch, throughout the club, and now also in AI. We are proud to contribute to further expanding these standards set by FC Bayern." Give your business an edge with its leading industry insights.

Wonderful expands AI operating platform for insurance workflows. Sep 10, 2026 Wonderful is positioning its AI operating system for use across core insurance workflows, including underwriting, claims, servicing and compliance. The platform is designed to sit above existing insurer systems rather than replace core infrastructure. For sales and underwriting, Wonderful applies AI to risk assessment, identity verification and policy recommendations. The platform also supports real-time quoting and can be used to process higher volumes without requiring insurers to increase staffing at the same rate. Claims functions cover intake, triage and validation from first notice of loss through settlement. Wonderful also supports fraud detection and liability assessment, with decisions recorded for later review. Service and retention workflows include coverage questions, policy changes and renewals across customer channels. The company said insurers can use the same platform across property and casualty, life and health operations. Wonderful integrates with existing insurance technology, including Guidewire and customer relationship management systems. Its approach is intended to connect AI tools with current operational infrastructure rather than require a wholesale system replacement. The company also focuses on deployment across complete workflows instead of introducing separate AI tools into individual tasks. Components built for one process can be reused elsewhere across an insurer's operations. Wonderful said its platform supports current AI models in production environments with continuous evaluation and governance controls. Insurers can determine how models are deployed depending on their infrastructure and regulatory requirements. The platform is designed for regulated businesses and supports compliance requirements including SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR and PCI DSS. Wonderful also provides an immutable audit trail and keeps human review in place for decisions requiring judgment. Local forward-deployed engineering teams work with insurers during implementation. Those teams connect the platform with existing core systems and regional compliance processes before transferring more development and management responsibility to internal teams. Wonderful also markets the system as a way to manage periods of higher transaction volume without proportional increases in headcount. Its insurance offering targets operating costs and workflow efficiency across underwriting, claims and policy servicing. The platform can also support more personalized insurance products using information available during underwriting. Wonderful said those capabilities are intended to help insurers improve risk selection and adapt products more closely to individual customers. Across insurance operations, Wonderful is offering a single AI infrastructure layer covering several business functions. The company is targeting insurers seeking to introduce AI while continuing to use their existing policy, claims and customer systems. In September, 2026, Wonderful has raised $550 mn in a Series C funding round at a $5 bn valuation. Insight Partners led the financing, with participation from Salesforce and existing investors Index Ventures, IVP, Vine Ventures, 9Yards and Bessemer Venture Partners. The round follows Wonderful's Series B in March 2026. Since then, the company has expanded into more than 35 markets and grown its workforce to 650 employees. Wonderful has also developed its platform into what it calls an AI operating system for enterprises. Customers use Wonderful AI OS to automate workflows, develop AI-native applications and coordinate AI agents across business functions.