While artificial intelligence has stormed into law firms and accounting practices with billion-dollar startups like Harvey leading the charge, the global consulting industry—a $250 billion behemoth—has remained stubbornly analog. A London-based startup founded by former McKinsey consultants is betting $2 million that it can crack open this resistant market, one Excel spreadsheet at a time.

Ascentra Labs announced Monday that it has closed a $2 million seed round led by NAP, a Berlin-based venture capital firm formerly known as Cavalry Ventures. The funding comes with participation from notable founder-angels including Alan Chang, chief executive of Fuse and former chief revenue officer at Revolut, and Fredrik Hjelm, chief executive of European e-scooter company Voi.

The investment is modest by the standards of enterprise AI — a sector that has seen funding rounds routinely reach into the hundreds of millions. But Ascentra's founders argue that their focused approach to a narrow but painful problem could give them an edge in a market where broad AI solutions have repeatedly failed to gain traction.

Consultants spend countless hours on Excel survey analysis that even top firms haven't automated

Paritosh Devbhandari, Ascentra's co-founder and chief executive, spent years at McKinsey & Company, including a stint at QuantumBlack, the firm's AI and advanced analytics division. He knows intimately the late nights consultants spend wrestling with survey data—the kind of quantitative research that forms the backbone of private equity due diligence.

"Before starting the company, I was working at McKinsey, specifically on the private equity team," Devbhandari explained in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. The work, he said, involves analyzing encoded survey responses from customers, suppliers, and market participants during potential acquisitions.

"Consultants typically spend a lot of time doing this in Excel," he said. "One of the things that surprised me, having worked at a couple of different places, is that the workflow — even at the best firms — really isn't that different from some of the boutiques. I always expected there would be some smarter way of doing things, and often there just isn't."

That gap between ex...