Top AI Startups In The United Kingdom

The UK has built so many AI companies working in all industries and data from Beauhurst shows that many of the best funded names have raised hundreds of millions of pounds, with backers spanning global venture capital groups and public bodies. This flow of money has helped products reach real customers at speed.

Healthcare is one of the most active areas. Exscientia, founded in 2012 in Tayside, uses AI to test millions of drug molecules and predict which ones could work best. Beauhurst says the company raised £299m before its stock market listing, alongside grants from Horizon 2020 and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Isomorphic Labs also works on drug discovery. It raised £464m in a single round from Alphabet, Google Ventures and Thrive Capital. The funding supports AI research designed to speed up the hunt for new treatments.

 

Which UK AI Companies Have Attracted The Most Money?

 

Transport and chips have also gotten some heavy backing. Wayve raised £822m in February 2024 from Nvidia, SoftBank and M12, reaching a post money valuation of £2.22b, according to Beauhurst. Graphcore raised £527m before SoftBank acquired the business for £462m, keeping its chip technology active under the same name.

Cybersecurity group Quantexa raised £421m and works with banks and public bodies to flag illegal activity. Health service provider Cera raised £479m to build data driven homecare and telehealth services through a mobile app.

Here are the 10 UK AI companies with the highest total capital raised, based on Beauhurst data:

1. Wayve £1.01b
2. OneTrust £699m
3. Graphcore £527m
4. Cera £479m
5. Isomorphic Labs £464m
6. Quantexa £421m
7. Thought Machine £397m
8. Lighthouse £378m
9. Multiverse £318m
10. Exscientia £299m

These businesses cover autonomous driving, privacy software, chips, banking platforms, travel pricing and workplace training. Most operate from London, with activity also in Scotland and the south west.

 

How Do Big AI Firms Influence Smaller UK Companies?

 

Large AI companies influence daily work for smaller firms through software tools and services. The Mole Valley Chamber report says UK SMEs account for about 99% of all businesses. Between 35% and 39% already use AI powered tools, up from 25% in 2024. Another 31% are considering adoption, taking total engagement close to 70%.

The same report says government reviews estimate that safe use of AI could add £47 billion to the economy over ten years, with productivity growing by 1.5% each year. Within SMEs, 45% say AI speeds up routine tasks and 39% say it lowers staff workload.

Finance software shows strong uptake. Sage Copilot offers “smart nudges ahead of VAT deadlines,” according to the study. Xero’s AI can match up to 90% of bank lines automatically, with error reduction of 37%.

This connection between large AI builders and smaller firms continues to deepen as more tools reach the market.

 

Top UK AI Startups:

 

Parisi

 

 

According to research, more than 50% of an organisation’s value is driven by perception and reputation, yet most communications teams lack a real-time, evidence-based view of how their activity is shaping stakeholder opinion and business outcomes. Parisi sought to address this with Parisi:Blue.

As a first mover in applying AI to corporate communications, we developed an AI-powered intelligence platform that gives organisations a real-time view of how their communications shape perception, influence stakeholders and drive business outcomes.

Parisi:Blue combines global media and parliamentary data with custom data sources to turn complex information into clear, actionable insight. It brings together performance metrics – reach, sentiment, importance and relevance – with contextual data showing who is driving the conversation and where it is happening, helping comms teams identify key voices, spot emerging trends and focus engagement where it matters most.

The platform integrates additional data sources, including market trends, economic indicators and website traffic, providing a comprehensive picture of the factors shaping influence and opportunity in each sector.

Unlike traditional monitoring tools, it goes beyond simple mention counts. At the heart of the system sits the Parisi:Blue Score™, a proprietary metric that brings together volume, sentiment, importance and relevance into a single number, so teams can track and understand changes in communications performance over time.

Parisi:Blue is the only platform to integrate print, online, broadcast and parliamentary data in one system alongside clients’ own datasets. By providing a live view, Parisi:Blue enables organisations to act early, manage risk effectively, and measure the return on investment and effectiveness of their communications in building resilient reputations in an increasingly complex environment.

 

Conscium

 

 

Conscium is a UK-based AI safety company founded in 2024 by Calum Chace, AI author and academic, and Daniel Hulme, one of the UK’s most successful AI entrepreneurs (Satalia and Faculty). Conscium’s mission is to develop safe and efficient AI that aligns with ethical standards and human values. It has recruited some of the world’s leading neuroscientists and computer scientists to its advisory board, including Karl Friston, Mark Solms, Anil Seth and Megan Peters.

Conscium has developed a platform to verify AI agents for accuracy, responsiveness, and other performance indicators, such as fairness, explainability, and alignment. The technology will test AI agents deployed across industries like marketing, financial services, consulting among others, as they continue to deploy AI agents at scale. Gartner predicts that 40% of apps in use by enterprises by the end of this year will incorporate task-specific AI agents, up from just 5% in 2025. That means there will be a huge number of agents to put through their paces.

Conscium stands as a shining example of UK AI innovation at a time when business leaders are now asking harder questions about trust, control and verification.

 

PEAK:AIO

 

 

PEAK:AIO is a UK-based leader in AI infrastructure, specialsing in high-performance storage for AI and HPC. The team behind PEAK:AIO led the development of software-defined storage in 2000 and developed industry-leading frameworks that are still used and licensed in enterprise storage today. Recognizing the differences in AI workflows and data requirements, PEAK:AIO was built from the ground up to match the exact needs of AI rather than repurposing existing technologies.

Deployed on server hardware from vendors such as Dell, PEAK:AIO creates AI Data Servers that deliver ultra-low latency and high bandwidth, optimising GPU utilisation. The platform is ideally suited to mid-scale GPU clusters where traditional storage solutions are often complex and expensive. It includes enhanced performance RAID protection, world-leading kernel-compliant connectivity options and protocols that deliver high performance while remaining simple to deploy and manage.

PEAK:AIO allows organisations to start as small as 30TB and grow seamlessly up to 360TB per 2U as AI projects scale, eliminating the need for upfront overinvestment. Offering the first fully Open pNFS platform for AI and HPC, PEAK:AIO lets teams expand from single nodes to superclusters.

Through its OEM partnership with PNY, PEAK:AIO is established, proven and at the heart of some of the world’s leading AI projects, providing a flexible, cost-effective and high-performance foundation for modern AI applications.

 

Phoebe

 

 

Phoebe.ai is a London-based startup building the immune system for software: AI agents that help developers by continuously detecting, diagnosing and preventing software failures.

As AI accelerates the creation of new software, complex systems are constantly changing and more opaque than ever. Debugging has remained a stubbornly manual activity. Phoebe helps automate the process, reducing the time to resolve alerts and incidents by up to 90% and mitigating problems before they cause disruption.

The company was founded in 2024 by long-time collaborators Matt Henderson and James Summerfield. The pair have now worked together across four companies, including their first startup Rangespan, a retail analytics company acquired by Google in 2014. Following the acquisition, both worked at Google, and later reunited again at Stripe, where James led software engineering teams and Matt was CEO of Stripe Europe.

Phoebe grew out of a shared frustration Matt and James experienced across organisations – where the most experienced engineers would frequently be pulled away from building new features and instead into reactive work, troubleshooting problems to keep systems running.

Phoebe serves companies across fintech, digital commerce and software-as-a-service, helping them improve reliability, reduce operational risk and free engineers from time-intensive manual investigation work. The company raised $17 million in seed funding in 2025, with the round led by GV and Cherry Ventures.

 

Skaiy

 

 

Skaiy is a deep-tech solar intelligence company building next-generation forecasting infrastructure for renewable energy systems. Co-founder and inventor Dr Tasmiat Rahman has researched Solar PV for 15 years, including through a PHD at Imperial College and is now a research fellow at Southampton University where Skaiy’s technology has been developed. His other co-founder and CEO is serial green energy entrepreneur Duncan Grierson. The company has been supported by the University of Southampton’s accelerator, Future Worlds.

Skaiy was founded to commercialise this research and address one of the most pressing challenges facing modern electricity grids: volatility driven by rapid growth in solar power. The company delivers ultra-accurate, site-specific solar power forecasts using proprietary sky cameras, optical sensors, and AI-driven computer vision models deployed directly at generation sites. By providing real-time, hyper-local “nowcasts,” Skaiy enables solar operators, battery storage providers, energy traders, and grid operators to reduce imbalance penalties, curtailment, and operational inefficiencies.

Since incorporating in 2025, Skaiy has progressed from publicly funded research to live deployment at the Chilbolton Observatory, supported by UK Research and Innovation. The technology demonstrates significantly improved accuracy compared with traditional satellite-based forecasts. The company is now preparing for industrial pilots and commercial rollout across the UK and Europe.

Rahman, has recently been appointed to the Royal Society of Engineering Enterprise Fellowship, recognising his significant contributions to solar energy forecasting, engineering research, and innovation in the UK’s clean energy sector.

 

 

CultureAI

 

 

 

CultureAI is the AI Usage Control platform built for the reality of modern work: employees are already using AI tools—often without approval—and sensitive data is flowing into models every day. Blocking AI doesn’t work. Logging it after the fact doesn’t help. CultureAI exists to enable safe, compliant, measurable AI usage without slowing teams down or killing innovation.

Where legacy tools fall short, CultureAI operates at the point of real risk: human interaction with AI inside browsers and SaaS applications. It provides clear visibility into how AI is actually used across sanctioned tools, shadow AI, and embedded AI features that traditional controls miss entirely. At the prompt level, CultureAI detects risky behaviour, understands context and intent, and intervenes in real time—coaching users before mistakes turn into incidents.

Unlike traditional DLPs or CASBs that rely on static rules and blunt controls, CultureAI manages AI use like a workflow, not a threat. Adaptive, role-aware policies allow organisations to guide behaviour with soft nudges, enforce guardrails when necessary, and apply controls that flex with real-world usage. Privacy-first by design, CultureAI avoids surveillance while delivering audit-ready reporting for security, compliance, and leadership teams.

Deployed easily via a lightweight browser extension, CultureAI gives organisations immediate insight into AI usage patterns, risk hotspots, and adoption trends—often within hours. The result is a clear move to the top-right quadrant: high AI adoption paired with high security and strong governance.

CultureAI empowers teams to use AI without fear—unlocking productivity, protecting sensitive data, and enabling organisations to innovate faster, with confidence.

 

AI Bridge Solutions

 

 

Based in Burton Latimer, Northamptonshire, AI Bridge Solutions specialises in the integration of artificial intelligence and automation for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The company offers a diverse portfolio of services designed to streamline business workflows and enhance digital presence:

Workflow Automation: Developing custom AI agents and automated “kits” that handle repetitive tasks such as lead scoring, smart email replies, and document extraction.

Strategic Consulting: Providing AI readiness assessments and tailored roadmaps to help businesses adopt technology without the complexity of enterprise-level costs.

Digital Transformation: Beyond AI, they offer foundational tech services including website development, app creation, and cloud infrastructure management.

Cybersecurity: Implementing AI-enhanced security frameworks to protect digital assets and ensure operational resilience.

The firm emphasizes a “results-driven” approach. Their philosophy centers on the idea that AI should amplify human productivity rather than replace it. They often work with sectors like finance, recruitment, and professional services, providing specific tools like CV readers for HR or lead generation scrapers for sales teams. By focusing on accessible entry points, AI Bridge Solutions serves as a local gateway for regional businesses to modernize their tech stack and remain competitive in an increasingly automated global economy.

 

AttiFin

 

 

AttiFin is a new AI-powered digital legal assistant that has been built specifically for the UK legal sector. Produced by the people behind Scrumconnect, and inspired by AI technology that was developed by Scrumconnect for the Ministry of Justice, AttiFin enables legal professionals to search documents in plain English, compare contract terms, draft legal content, check for compliance, and identify precedence. Security, governance and full auditability are all built in as standard and data doesn’t leave the Practice. Trained exclusively on UK law, AttiFin is designed to be accurate, fast, and easy to adopt across law firms, in-house teams, and boutique legal organisations.

 

Polaron

 

 

Polaron is a London-based AI startup building the ‘intelligence layer for materials science’. This means addressing a bottleneck in materials manufacturing: understanding the connection between how materials are made and how they perform.

Spun-out from Imperial College London after seven years of research at the intersection of AI and materials science, the company was co-founded by CEO Isaac Squires, CTO Steve Kench and Chief Scientist Sam Cooper. The technology is already deployed with global manufacturing leaders, including EV makers responsible for over a third of the world’s electric vehicle production. One use case supporting the design of new battery electrodes has yielded energy density improvements exceeding 10 percent.

The missing intelligence layer

For more than a century, industries have automated how products are made, but understanding the materials themselves still relies on manual work, isolated tools and trial and error. Engineers are left to piece together how processing choices affect performance, often using bespoke scripts and subjective judgement.

At the heart of this challenge is a fundamental scientific relationship: processing determines structure, and structure determines performance. The arrangement of grains, pores, phases, and defects inside a material governs properties such as strength, lifetime, and failure. This structure is not abstract. It is directly observable under the microscope, where rich microstructural images capture the physical fingerprint of how a material was made and how it will behave – supporting cleaner, more efficient manufacturing at scale.

 

Tandem

 

 

 

Tandem, by Early Ideas, is an innovative platform transforming passive screen time into meaningful learning moments for families with young children. Already used by more than 1,500 households across the UK and the Isle of Man, Tandem harnesses generative AI to support early years development through personalised storytelling and play.

Founded in 2023 by former clinicians and technologists Rob Hughes and Alastair van Heerden, Tandem creates bespoke storybooks and activities for children aged 2-8. Designed to nurture emotional wellbeing, early literacy and creativity, the platform also helps time-pressed parents connect more deeply with their children, turning technology into a shared, human experience rather than a passive distraction.

In recognition of its social impact and responsible use of AI, Tandem was named the Data & AI winner of the 2025 Isle of Man Innovation Challenge. The award highlighted the platform’s contribution to early childhood development, as well as the founders’ commitment to ethical, people-centred innovation. Content is adapted to each child’s needs, reflecting cultural context, family dynamics, neurodiversity and multilingual households.

Tandem’s collaboration with the Isle of Man has played a key role in refining and scaling the platform. Rob Hughes’ family ties to the Island, combined with its supportive and forward-thinking tech ecosystem, made it a natural environment to pilot and grow a socially impactful AI solution.

Looking ahead, Tandem is expanding across both direct-to-consumer and B2Government markets, including a partnership with Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, while exploring opportunities in the US and low- to middle-income markets.

 

OLO Robotics

 

 

OLO Robotics is democratising robotics development through an AI-native platform that transforms how developers build robotic solutions. Founded in Sheffield, the startup has engineered a breakthrough approach that combines artificial intelligence with industry-standard ROS2 technology to eliminate barriers that have traditionally locked robotics behind specialist expertise.

At its core, OLO’s platform leverages AI to radically simplify robot programming and control. The company’s signature feature -an AI-assisted SDK playground – allows developers to write and deploy robotic code using natural language prompts and AI suggestions, dramatically accelerating development cycles. This approach transforms robotics from a PhD-level discipline into an accessible domain for mainstream software developers.

The platform provides a unified development environment that integrates real-time 3D visualisation, teleoperation, sensor data streaming, and fleet management – all accessible through an intuitive web interface. OLO’s AI layer works alongside developers familiar with Python and JavaScript, eliminating the steep learning curves that have historically prevented innovation in robotics.

Rather than building proprietary solutions, OLO strategically embraces ROS2 as its foundation, ensuring compatibility with thousands of existing robots while enabling rapid scaling without custom driver development. This ecosystem-first approach positions OLO as both technically innovative and pragmatically scalable.

Launching to market in early 2026, OLO Robotics is positioned to unlock a market of talented developers currently excluded from robotics innovation – transforming how enterprises, universities, and integrators approach robotic automation.

 

Binq

 

 

Binq is transforming how UK small businesses access essential services through open banking and AI technology. Since launching in August 2025, the platform has supported over 15,000 businesses and seen more than £500m in funding enquiries, reaching profitability within three months.

The platform tackles major challenges facing Britain’s SMEs. With a £65bn funding shortfall and 60% of owners not shopping around for better finance deals, Binq connects businesses with specialist lenders offering £1,000 to £1 million in funding, with approvals in 24 hours and same-day deposits. This compares to traditional banks which can take up to 90 days.

Binq’s Smart Search technology analyses open banking data to match businesses with personalised funding, insurance, energy deals, and banking options. The platform’s AI assistant monitors business performance, flags issues, and provides guidance on everything from cashflow warnings to legislative changes. Notably, 70% of enquiries are handled entirely by AI, though human experts remain available when needed.

The platform addresses critical gaps in SME support. Business energy costs have risen 75% since 2021 with no price cap protection, while 80% of SMEs are under-insured and 40% have no insurance coverage. Less than 1% of SMEs have switched banks in the past decade, despite better options available.

Part of the Intelligent Lending group and headquartered in Manchester’s MediaCity, Binq demonstrates how AI can make business management less stressful for time-pressed owners, helping them start, manage, and grow their companies more effectively.