Elementaryb launches ‘sherloc,’ an AI financial platform for SMEs

By Vriti Gothi

Elementaryb has launched sherloc, an AI-powered financial intelligence platform designed specifically for small and medium-sized enterprises, marking what the company describes as the world’s first “financial brain” built for the SME sector.

The London-based FinTech stated that the commercial rollout follows a five-year development cycle and early-stage validation with business owners, CFOs, and advisors. The platform is onboarding 270 startups and scaleups through three accelerator programmes, including FasterForward by the Female Founder Network (FFinc) and the Frontier Programme run by London Grow in partnership with the Fidelity Centre for Applied Technology (FCAT).

The launch comes at a time when SMEs, which account for 99% of UK businesses and more than half of private-sector turnover, according to the Federation of Small Businesses, continue to face heightened exposure to economic shocks, supply-chain risks and liquidity pressures. While large enterprises have long used sophisticated financial planning tools, access to forward-looking analytics has historically been out of reach for smaller firms due to cost and complexity.

sherloc aims to close that gap by connecting operational, budgetary and financial data to generate strategic forecasts and real-time insights. The platform uses AI-driven signals to identify risks, economic trends and supply-chain events, while also suggesting potential responses. Its feature set includes a bottom-up forecasting engine, shared workspaces with audit trails, data-integrity checks and embedded educational content designed to simplify financial concepts for non-experts.

Karen Rudich, CEO of Elementaryb, said, “Marks the start of an exciting new chapter. SMEs deserve more than just a backwards glance at their finances; they need to see what’s coming around the corner. sherloc has been designed to offer them just that capability, as well as helping them to identify future opportunities for growth.”

Elementaryb is also positioning sherloc as the foundation for what it calls the UK’s first independent SME marketplace, a curated network of financial and operational services. Launch partners include Time Finance, Caxton, iwoca, Xero, Legal Clarity, RJF Accountants, The Bird Dog and xe.com, alongside ecosystem collaborators such as FCAT, London & Partners, FFinc, HSBC, Grant Thornton, Block and Wilson Sonsini.