Now funding AI-native companies

Banks lend on
the past.
We don't.

Surge finances AI-native companies that traditional lenders can't assess — because we built our credit model around future potential, not historical precedent.

+43
founders funded after being rejected
Scroll
72h
Credit decision.
Not 12 weeks. Not 6. 72 hours.
0
Legacy risk frameworks.
No committee. No precedent. No waiting.
100%
Of our deals were rejected
by at least one traditional bank first.

If your company is doing something that's never been done before,
every bank will reject you.

Not because you're a bad bet. Because you don't fit their spreadsheet. They need three years of P&L, a comparable company, a category to put you in.

You have none of that. Not because you're failing.

Because you're first.

Founder working late
"

The entire banking credit model was built to evaluate businesses that already exist in recognizable form. It was never designed to assess a company that's creating a category from scratch.

The Surge thesis

Three things we do that no traditional lender can.

01

Potential-Based Underwriting

We evaluate your growth trajectory, market creation potential, and upside scenarios — not last year's revenue. Revenue is a trailing indicator. We're interested in what comes next.

  • Market creation potential scored against 40+ vectors
  • Multiple upside scenarios modelled simultaneously
  • No historical benchmark required
POTENTIAL TRAJECTORY MODEL
HISTORICAL NOW PROJECTED →
Upside scenario (24 months) +340%
AI ASSUMPTION STRESS-TEST
Market adoption rate Stress tested ✓
Competitive response model Stress tested ✓
Capital efficiency ratio Stress tested ✓
Scenario: market shifts -30% Viable ⚠
Overall risk assessment Fundable
02

AI That Thinks Like a Founder

Our models stress-test your assumptions, challenge your business model, and map multiple futures — the same way your best investor would. Not a credit committee that's never run a company.

  • Challenges your assumptions before you present them
  • Gets sharper with every deal it sees
  • Decision rationale always visible — no black box
03

No Box Required

If there's no comparable company, good. That's exactly the kind of deal we were built for. Traditional lenders need a category. We don't need one. Category creators are our best customers.

  • Novel business models assessed on their own terms
  • No industry comparison required
  • The weirder the model, the more we want to hear it
CATEGORY ASSESSMENT
Traditional Bank

ERROR: No SIC code match found. No comparable found. Application rejected.

Surge

Category: First-mover in autonomous logistics infrastructure. No precedent — assessed on market creation trajectory and execution capability.

Decision: Fundable → Term sheet issued

From vision to term sheet in 72 hours.

Three steps. No committees. No weeks of silence. A clear decision with a clear rationale — either way.

Share your vision

Tell us what you're building and where you're going. No templates. No standard forms.

AI maps your upside

Our system models your market, stress-tests your assumptions, and builds multiple future scenarios — in hours, not weeks.

You get a decision

A clear yes, a clear number, and a clear rationale. If it's a no, we tell you exactly why — and what would change it.

app.surge.finance/assessment/meridian-ai-2024
LIVE
ACTIVE ASSESSMENT
Meridian AI — Series A Bridge
Autonomous logistics infrastructure · €2.4M requested
Analysis running
Started 14:32 · ETA 16:45
MARKET CREATION SCORE
87/100
↑ Top 8% of assessed
UPSIDE SCENARIO RANGE
1847M
24-month projected ARR
ASSUMPTION STRESS-TEST
4/6
2 scenarios need input
PRELIMINARY DECISION
Fundable
Term sheet: 72h
LIVE ANALYSIS LOG
14:32 Application received. Parsing founding team profile...
14:35 Market sizing: autonomous logistics. No comparable found. Creating novel category model...
14:51 Running 6 competitive response scenarios...
15:08 Capital efficiency: strong. Customer adoption assumptions flagged — requesting input...
Generating term sheet scenarios
RISK FACTOR BREAKDOWN
Execution risk Low
Market timing Favorable
Competitive moat Strong
Capital efficiency Very High
Adoption rate assumptions Review needed
Overall assessment: Fundable with strong upside. One follow-up input required before term sheet.

What an assessment actually looks like.

No black box. No waiting for a callback. A live view into how Surge thinks about your company — in real time.

app.surge.finance / dashboard
MA
Meridian AI
Autonomous logistics · Series A Bridge · €2.4M
18:42:07
SURGE SCORE
87
/100
↑ Top 8% of all assessed companies
UPSIDE RANGE (24M)
€18M–€47M
3 scenarios modelled
PRELIMINARY DECISION
Fundable
Term sheet ready in 72h
1 follow-up input requested
AI Scenario Analysis 3 scenarios · updated 2min ago
Base case
Market grows 2× by 2027
ARR (24M)
€28M
Probability
62%
Strong
Bull case
Category dominance — winner takes all
ARR (24M)
€47M
Probability
24%
Exceptional
Stress case
Adoption -30%, competitor enters
ARR (24M)
€18M
Probability
14%
Viable
All scenarios fundable. Recommendation: Proceed to term sheet.
Every company we fund is one a traditional bank already rejected — and that's not a coincidence, that's the strategy.
01

Surge approves decisions in 72 hours.

The average SME loan takes 12 weeks at a traditional bank. That's not a process problem. That's a structural one. And we have a different structure.

02

No credit committee. No legacy risk framework slowing us down.

Just AI that gets sharper with every deal we do. Every rejection we overturn teaches our model something new. We're building the most comprehensive dataset on category-creating companies in Europe.

03

The companies banks can't assess today will define industries tomorrow.

We own that pipeline. And as these companies grow, they don't go back to the bank that rejected them. They deepen with us.

The founders who trusted us first.

Surge is built for AI-native startups with new business models, no historical benchmark, and growth potential that no existing lender knows how to read. Every one of them had already been told no.

Lena Hartmann
Lena Hartmann
CEO · Meridian AI
×3 rejected

"Every bank told us our model was too new to assess. Surge looked at the same data and gave us a term sheet in four days. The banks were using the wrong lens."

Funded €2.4M
Marcus van der Berg
Marcus van der Berg
Founder · Fluxora
×5 rejected

"Our entire revenue model is AI-based subscription infrastructure. Not a single bank could categorise us. Surge built a model from scratch and funded us in 68 hours."

Funded €1.8M
Amara Osei
Amara Osei
CTO · Veridian
×4 rejected

"Traditional lenders saw no comparables and stopped there. Surge saw the market we were creating. That's the difference between a lender that looks back and one that looks forward."

Funded €3.1M
100% of our funded companies were rejected by at least one traditional bank first

If a bank already told you no,
we want to hear why.

Tell us what you're building. Our AI runs the first analysis in under an hour. If there's a deal here, you'll know it in 72 hours.

No commitment. No forms to fill before you know where you stand.

Join 47 founders who got funded after being turned down elsewhere.