Specialist aviation intelligence seed fund
Dooks Capital backs early-stage technical founders building AI for airline, airport, and ground operations intelligence.
We invest where live data, operational complexity, and commercial judgment meet and where better decisions can materially improve profit, cost, resilience, and safety.
Get in touchThe Thesis
Real-time actions from live data that increase revenue and reduce costs are now a reality with Agentic AI.
Airlines and airports already sit on vast amounts of live operational and commercial data. The problem is not data availability. The opportunity is that systems remain fragmented, slow, and poorly connected to real-time decisions.
Revenue sits in one system. Cost lands weeks later. Disruption signals exist but are rarely translated into action early enough. Network, fuel, crew, airport, and airspace decisions are still too often made with incomplete or delayed intelligence.
Dooks Capital invests in technical founders building the missing layer between raw data and better operational decisions, with a focus on rapidly increasing revenue and reducing costs.
This is not generic enterprise software. It is specialist aviation intelligence.
Dooks Capital combines early-stage capital with operating access: product validation, commercial shaping, senior industry introductions, and where possible a path to first deployment in a live aviation environment.
Areas of interest
We are interested in products that do one or more of the following.
What We Back
Most airlines can see revenue in real time. Very few can see true flight profitability in time to act on it.
Up to 50 expense lines often arrive too late and fragmented to support live decisions. Profitable route actions or changes are often made using incomplete proxies.
We are interested in tools that connect live revenue signals to forward cost forecasting and produce usable flight-level profitability intelligence before departure.
Disruption remains one of the largest controllable cost and customer pain points in European aviation.
The underlying signals often exist well before departure.
We are interested in products that identify disruption risk early, quantify the operational and compensation consequences, and help teams choose the lowest-cost or least-disruptive action before delays escalate.
Many network decisions are still reviewed too late to influence profitability.
A route can deteriorate long before management processes catch up. The opportunity is to build tools that monitor route health in real time and use Agentic AI to act.
We are especially interested in products that combine internal airline data with external competitive signals in real time.
Fuel and emissions remain one of the largest cost lines in aviation, but the optimisation problem is becoming more complex, not less.
Tankering, uplift choice, payload trade-offs, carbon cost, schedule resilience, and SAF compliance all interact.
We are interested in products that improve fuel and emissions decision-making with better modelling, economics, and usability using live Agentic AI to take proactive profitable actions at individual flight level.
European airspace inefficiency continues to create avoidable cost, delay, and complexity for airlines.
ATC restrictions, flow constraints, routing inefficiencies, fleet positioning, and downstream schedule consequences all interact, but airlines often lack tools that convert those inputs into fast operational decisions.
We are interested in systems that help carriers respond better to airspace and ATM constraints, with a clear link to cost, delay, and schedule performance.
Airport stands and ramp operations remain high-friction, high-risk environments with significant safety and cost consequences.
There is growing scope for AI-driven perception, monitoring, and assisted autonomy across ground vehicles, equipment movement, FOD detection, worker proximity, and stand safety. Platforms such as NVIDIA Alpamayo point to how quickly autonomy and machine perception could enhance airport safety.
We are interested in software-led products that improve ramp safety, reduce avoidable damage, and create a practical pathway toward more intelligent or semi-autonomous ground operations.
If you are building in one of these areas - or in another overlooked part of aviation intelligence - we would like to hear from you.
How We Invest
Typical initial cheque size
$ 25k - $ 100k
Dooks Capital typically invests at pre-seed and seed stage, backing technical founders where sector knowledge and early commercial access can make a material difference.
What we aim to contribute alongside capital
We are most useful where the problem is real, the technical ambition is serious, and customer access matters as much as capital.
We are not looking for generic software dressed up for aviation. We are interested in products built for the complexity of the sector. Agentic AI to individual flight level will be transformative for aviation.
Former COO of Ryanair, easyJet, and Riyadh Air. Former CEO of Malaysia Airlines.
Dooks Capital was set up to back founders building the intelligence tools aviation has needed for years: tools that improve the quality and speed of commercial and operational decision-making.
The fund is shaped by decades of experience in the decisions that matter most in airline performance: network, cost, disruption, fleet deployment, operations, and execution.
Contact
We back early-stage founders building aviation intelligence software, and infrastructure for airlines, airports and ground operations.
Review process