Less Paper. More Metal. GoSmarter Pitches to Women Angels of Wales
On 24 March 2026, GoSmarter.ai pitched its £500,000 Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) raise to Women Angels of Wales, taking the “Less Paper. More Metal.” message in front of one of Wales’ most active angel investor networks. The event was hosted by Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Brewin Dolphin in Cardiff and brought together three founders: GoSmarter.ai by Nightingale HQ, Astral Automation Solutions, and Holidity.
The evening opened with an education session from Gareth I. Jones on what drives entrepreneurial growth and how elements of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Industrial Liaison Programme could be replicated here in Wales to better support founders and strengthen the ecosystem. Then the pitches began.
GoSmarter walked away with more than a good room. The conversations that continued well after the formal sessions confirmed what the team already knew: the problem GoSmarter is solving is real, persistent, and well overdue for a fix.
The Problem: Metals Manufacturing Is Drowning in Paper
Walk into most metals factories in the UK and Ireland today and you will find two things that should not go together: precision machinery running to tight tolerances, and admin processes that would not look out of place in a corner shop from thirty years ago.
Mill certificates printed, stamped, and filed in binders. Production schedules on whiteboards. Cutting plans calculated in spreadsheets that break every time someone with institutional knowledge retires. And somewhere in that factory, every single day, someone is re-keying data that already exists on a supplier PDF, because no one has built the bridge to get it into the system automatically.
This is what the GoSmarter team calls the Silver Tsunami. The metals sector is facing an ageing workforce retiring faster than the industry can replace them. Skilled operators who held production knowledge in their heads are leaving. Their replacements need systems that capture that knowledge and put it to work. Instead, factories are spending hours per week on manual cert data entry, chasing heat numbers before audits, and calculating offcut reuse by hand. Every hour spent on that is an hour not spent making metal.
What GoSmarter Does
GoSmarter.ai automates the paper-heavy, time-consuming processes that keep metals manufacturers stuck, without ripping out the core systems they already have. Three products sit at the heart of it.
Mill Certificate AI reads supplier mill certificates automatically, extracts the relevant data, and pushes it into the workflow. No re-keying. No lost PDFs. No panicked cert hunt the morning of an audit. The system handles scanned documents, clean digitals, and phone photos alike, and processes each page in under 15 seconds.
Cutting Optimiser calculates the most efficient way to cut stock against open orders, minimising scrap and tracking offcuts for reuse across future jobs. Where manual approaches typically leave between 3% and 8% of material on the floor, GoSmarter targets the industry benchmark of 2.5% or better.
Inventory and Traceability gives the shop floor real-time visibility of what is on hand, where it is, and what it has been tested against, so quality teams can answer traceability questions in seconds rather than hours.
Rajesh Nair, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tata Steel UK, noted that GoSmarter helped “create clarity, shared understanding, and momentum around how AI can support their people, operations, and long-term strategy.” Tony Woods, CEO at a partner metals business, was more direct: “The integration of AI and digital tracking has significantly improved our operational efficiency and sustainability performance.”
These are not pilot projects. GoSmarter has recurring revenue, active customers across the UK and Ireland, research and development collaborations with enterprise metals manufacturers including Tata Steel UK, and a patent filed on its core intellectual property.
The Round: £500k EIS, 45% Already In
GoSmarter is raising £500,000 under the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) at a £1.5 million valuation. As of the Women Angels of Wales pitch on 24 March, 45% of the round is already secured: £200,000 in non-dilutive grant funding alongside £25,000 in cash investment.
The raise covers an 18-month runway to the key milestones that set up the next stage of growth. The cap table has three rows. The intellectual property is patent-filed. The investor target is a 10x return on investment within four years, with an exit via trade sale or management buyout targeted around 2031.
The market numbers make a clear case. GoSmarter’s total addressable market (TAM) sits at approximately 2% of the global metals market, valued at £3.2 trillion and growing at 4.1% per year. In the UK and EU alone, there are around 400,000 metals small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the target profile: land-and-expand Software as a Service (SaaS) customers who need exactly what GoSmarter delivers, and who tend to start with one product and grow from there.
GoSmarter is looking for investors who are active in AI, SaaS, or manufacturing, who care about sustainability and backing diverse founders, and who want a seat at the table as board members or advisors rather than passive names on a cap table.
Why Women Angels of Wales
Events like this matter because they are where the Welsh tech ecosystem builds its real connections.
Women Angels of Wales is not a passive investment club. The group backs founders with conviction and genuine sector expertise. The education session from Gareth I. Jones set a tone that matched the ambition in the room: rigorous, forward-looking, and genuinely interested in how Wales builds a stronger platform for high-growth founders.
The Development Bank of Wales and the British Business Bank both support the network, which reflects the broader commitment to growing Welsh startups past seed rounds and into the markets they deserve. Three founders, one evening, one room of serious investors. That is how ecosystems get built, and GoSmarter is proud to be part of that story.
The next Women Angels of Wales Education and Pitch event takes place on 1st July. If you want to find out more about angel investing or attending future events, get in touch at hello@womenangelsofwales.com.
Want to Back the Round?
The EIS raise is open now. If you invest in AI, SaaS, or manufacturing, care about sustainability, and want to back a team with real traction and a defensible product, get in touch with Ruth directly: ruth@gosmarter.ai
GoSmarter is looking for engaged investors who want to help shape a product already changing how metals manufacturers work, not just a line on a portfolio page.
Less paper. More metal. Let’s build it together.