Applied AI is Tech Nation’s first growth programme for Artificial Intelligence to help the UK’s most promising founders who are applying AI in practical areas and to create real-world impact. The programme is based on peer-to-peer support and the shared experience of later-stage founders, all curated under the values of honesty, intimacy and trust.
We know that scaling an AI company comes with its own set of unique challenges. This is a network that will unpack the AI-specific scaling journey, led by those who have done it and with the support of like-minded peers.
Our six-month programme focuses on providing founders and leaders of the sector with invaluable skills, a powerful network – including peers, investors and potential clients – and the ability to implement changes that will help their companies grow.
It’s free to join, and we don’t take an equity stake in your business. To determine who gets a place on the cohort, we’ve put together a panel of expert judges.
This year, the Applied AI programme received more applications than ever before. Our judges narrowed it down to 32 brilliant companies in a large variety of sectors, where Construction/Industry 4.0, Healthcare and Enterprise Software are the most represented sectors. Read more about Applied AI 2.0.
Didcot | @archangel_im
Archangel Imaging uses AI at the edge and human-machine teaming to solve global problems like protecting people, animals and infrastructure. They have built AI-enabled cameras which operate in challenging environments and a human-machine teaming platform called Cerebella. Cerebella integrates smart cameras and other sensors to detect anomalies, allowing drone, robotic or human staff to respond in real time.
Oxford | @arctoris
Arctoris generate drug discovery data on demand for pharmaceutical corporations, biotech companies, and academic centres globally. They provide remote access to a wide range of drug discovery experiments which they conduct on their robotic platform, enabling partners and clients to rapidly, accurately and cost-effectively perform research and advance drug discovery programmes, creating a convincing solution for fast, reliable and fully compliant research.
London | @BKwai_
BKwai is radically improving the built environment throughout the lifecycle of assets – from planning, to construction, to long term asset management. They use data science and AI to leverage insights from manual measurements, sensor data and satellite data, resulting in next-generation products for construction and preventative maintenance for a more resilient built environment.
Oxford | @CaristoHeart
Predicting heart attacks years before they happen, Caristo is disrupting diagnosis and treatment of coronary heart disease. This bold claim is supported by a solid science platform, with a string of groundbreaking publications in top-tier scientific journals. Caristo's vision is to be the predominant clinical AI provider in diagnostic imaging, with a plan to tackle major disease areas like diabetes and stroke.
Belfast | @CattleEye
CattleEye is improving the lives of farmers and their livestock by developing the world’s first autonomous livestock monitoring platform utilising video analytics powered by deep learning AI. Farmers simply need to install a low-cost security camera over the exit race of their milking parlour, before cloud-based AI algorithms start learning how to identify their cows, monitor their welfare and an increasing number of other behaviours.
London | @cognitiv_plus
Helping to modernise the legal sector, Cognitiv+ empowers businesses and law firms with deeper insights on their legal data. Their machine learning technology automatically reviews, identifies and extracts key provisions from complicated corporate and legal documents.
London | @ContilioHQ
Contilio is the first 3D AI platform that automatically provides actionable intelligence from 3D data collected from construction sites in real-time, enabling significant savings, semantic digital twins and automated payments for the $12tn construction industry.
Edinburgh | @continuum_ind
Continuum Industries helps engineering professionals to design big, complex infrastructure projects better and faster. Their product, Optioneer, lets multi-disciplinary design teams automate their existing design process and use AI to explore millions of design options and find the best ones in hours rather than months.
Cambridge | @conundrumai
Tackling the beast of industrial automation, Conundrum uses AI-driven technologies to address personal data management, quality control and optimization. Conundrum oversees a whole production process and assists factory engineers in decision making, helping to reduce waste and downtime, and prevent defects and unexpected shutdowns.
Oxford | @iLoF_tech
Creating an AI-powered digital library of disease biomarkers - and helping to find Alzheimer’s cure, ILoF is enabling a new era of personalized medicine by using AI and photonics. They leverage machine learning to drastically reduce the cost and time of drug discovery, and provide screening and stratification tools in an affordable, fast and portable way.
London | @lgn_ai
LGN is developing AI to AI communication protocols for the future of mass scaled autonomous system deployments. Their software has been proven to improve model performance on hard classes by 180% when using just 2.5% of the training data, which translates to a direct saving in transfer, compute, processing and storage costs. This allows businesses to scale out the training and deployment of multi-sensor AI systems without exploding their costs.
Brighouse | @Logicallyai
Logically combines advanced AI with the world’s largest fact-checking team to help governments, businesses and the public uncover and address harmful misinformation and deliberate disinformation that is increasingly spread across the world. They have a mission to bring credibility and confidence to news and social discourse globally, aiming to restore trust in a fractured media landscape.
Edinburgh | @machine_labs
Improving the way consumers shop online, Machine Labs is an automated email marketing solution for e-commerce stores. They harness data science and implement AI to improve email communications, helping store owners to develop quality customer relationships and exponentially boost their sales.
London | @Metis_labs
The control of many manufacturing processes still relies on human judgement and experience, which can result in product quality defects, low productivity, and unnecessary CO2 emissions. Metis uses AI-enabled technology to encode human judgement into software - improving the efficiency and reliability of manufacturing processes. Their product includes self-service vision systems, real-time analytics platform, and closed-loop intelligent process control.
London
Nodes & Links empowers project planners to make better decisions, delivering time and cost savings to large-scale projects. Their cloud-based platform combines sophisticated AI models with automation and a smooth user experience, providing a 'one-stop' solution for the broader project management function across all major project-related decisions
London | @nPlanHQ
nPlan provides AI-driven risk analysis for major construction projects. They help their clients understand uncertainty and risk using machine learning tech and the world’s largest dataset of construction programmes. Their insights are used to change the course of major capital projects, providing greater certainty and saving tens of millions of pounds.
Bristol | @okkohealth
Using your smartphone to protect your sight, OKKO is bringing real-time monitoring of eye health into the hands of patients and linking straight to eye care professionals. OKKO’s software allows patients to self-monitor their sight between in-person hospital visits, through interpreting interactions with a simple video game. It flags those people who may be having problems with their vision ahead of time, to promote early diagnosis, early treatment and to save sight.
Bristol | @1bigcircle
One Big Circle are improving safety and operations in industrial environments. Initially developed in the UK rail sector, their intelligent video solution applies Machine Learning to understand environments to raise alerts and increase efficiency and safety. For example, they use thermal camera technology and ML to identify excess heat in sections of electric rail which could cause a dangerous fault.
Oxford | @Optellum1
Beating lung cancer with AI, Oxford-based Optellum helps clinicians identify, diagnose and track at-risk patients in the early, hence curable stages. Optellum developed the world’s first AI-based Decision Support platform to manage these patients, validated in studies led by lung cancer guidelines authors.
London | @Panakeia_Tech
Cancer diagnosis requires a pathologist to examine biopsy images, followed by additional lab tests. This process takes 3-30 days and costs hospitals hundreds of pounds per patient. Panakeia Technologies offers an AI-driven platform for rapid, instrument-free precision cancer diagnostics which eliminates the need for multiple lab-based tests making diagnosis 10 times faster and 16 times cheaper.
London | @rahkoAI
Rahko is one of the world's most advanced teams in quantum machine learning. With the ambition of "solving chemistry", Rahko is accelerating the discovery of new materials, batteries and drugs with groundbreaking simulation capabilities. Rahko works in collaboration with large companies whose future success depends on cutting-edge discovery capabilities, and several of the world's largest quantum hardware manufacturers and quantum cloud providers.
London | @reinferio
Driving revenue and efficiency with conversational AI, Re:infer mines communications data (emails, chats, calls, support tickets) in real-time. It works by extracting multiple semantic intents, entities and sentiment in communications traffic that uncover detailed analytics behind every customer. Re:infer is used to discover, measure and automate processes so that businesses can scale revenue growth and better understand customer retention.
London | @recycleye
Recycleye is training the world’s most powerful machines to bring total transparency, traceability and accountability to the waste management industry. Their team of technologists and creatives has developed computer vision algorithms that replicate the power of human vision to identify every item in entire waste streams - broken down by material, object and even brand.
Cambridge | @Robok_Vision
RoboK is using new techniques in computer vision and deep learning to build optimised 3D sensing and perception software solutions for low-power computing platforms. In short, it’s enabling cars and machines to ‘see’ and ‘understand’ the implications of changes to their environment. They obtain 3D information efficiently from a combination of sensors (primarily cameras) and enable object detection, classification, localisation and depth estimation on low-power embedded systems.
Cambridge | @SataviaUK
Simplifying aviation decision-making, SATAVIA is helping to make flying smarter and greener. SATAVIA is the only solution delivering actionable insight in aviation which is able to combine and validate multiple environmental, weather, aircraft and maintenance datasets. It makes aircraft condition monitoring 20% more accurate, and delivers fuel savings and emission reductions.
Belfast | @SonraiLtd
Conceptualising raw data into actionable insights, Sonrai performs modern-day precision healthcare analysis. Operating in a no-code environment where storyboards can be created, it allows invested clients to derive new findings in the data lakes they create. This, in turn, helps them to drive their own value proposition to entice new clients and investors.
Glasgow | @TMedicines
Talking Medicines use AI to capture the true voice of the patient. They combine conversational AI, self-reporting through connected devices and smart surveys to provide data-driven, dynamic market intelligence on the usage of medicines for drug companies. Real-time, compliant insights can replace traditional focus groups, prescriber reports and clinical profiles to tell pharmaceutical companies who is using their medicines, how, and what they really think of their brands.
Cambridge | @techspertio
The world’s first AI-driven solution to knowledge exchange, Techspert maps the world's expertise by using AI to match experts to business customer needs. Their platform provides an efficient and convenient interface for customers to engage in primary research, and gain insight through calls and surveys with precisely matched experts, as well as efficiently handling payments to experts for their time.
Vector.ai transforms document and email-driven operations in global logistics. Their platform intelligently gathers content so that operators can respond rapidly to customer and other third-party demands. Built for logistics transactions, including customs declarations, the Vector platform is designed to drive high-performance operations teams using AI.
London | @vinehealth_
Vinehealth increases the quality of life and survival of cancer patients by using a combination of behavioural science and AI. Their app allows patients to track, understand and optimise their care, supporting them to feel in control and better self-manage. Through this, Vinehealth generates crucial real-world data to inform healthcare delivery and drug development.
Manchester | @VoiceIq
VoiceIQ is a no-friction phone system for enterprise sales teams that increases revenue and drives automation with the power of voice AI. VoiceIQ’s platform predicts the best time to call contacts and detects and tags important points in conversation in real-time. With seamless integration into the world’s leading CRM systems, VoiceIQ reduces post-call admin to zero.
Cardiff | @wbb_ai
Changing the way governments engage with citizens, We Build Bots has developed an AI-powered citizen service automation platform. It leverages chatbots, voice and data analytics to help Public Sector organisations deliver better, faster, cheaper citizen services. They’ve processed 3 million interactions to date and use that data to help the Public Sector better understand their citizens.
To be eligible, your company could focus on anything from mobility to manufacturing, from e-commerce to healthcare, but your product must solve an identified, real problem. Our programme callout is closed for this time, but you can pre-register your interest in the programme.
The eligibility criteria:
Founder-focused sessions delivered by world-leading scale coaches covering core issues.
Intimate networking sessions designed with the wider leadership team in mind and the challenges you face.
Several trips, including one international trip co-organised with DIT, to showcase companies at home and overseas.
The chance to share experiences, problem-solve and learn from industry leaders.
Artificial Intelligence is making waves. With countries around the world investing heavily in grand plans and strategies for technology, it has never been more important to support AI that is solving real-world problems in the UK. Dame Wendy Hall, Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton and a member of the Applied AI judging panel, explains that more impactful changes and initiatives are continuing to be actioned for AI.
The UK has continued to make strides as an international leader in Artificial Intelligence, since the recommendations of the AI Review that I co-authored in 2017. From the launch of the bespoke AI & Data Sector Deal, to the recently announced AI Council, we are seeing impactful initiatives announced to continue this important work. I am therefore thrilled to see that Tech Nation has created a tailored, nationally-focused growth programme for entrepreneurs in the Applied AI space
Dame Wendy Hall, Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton
Coming out of the programme and being plunged into Covid lockdown I found the cohort a brilliant place for support, we were all exchanging information and tips as they happened. It’s not the best time being a startup but the camaraderie has been exceptional and really helped us through.
Elizabeth Clarke, CEO of Dream Agility
Tech Nation has been one of the most impactful programmes we have attended – and we have attended so many! All Tech Nation staff, especially Thea and Harry, speakers, content quality, communications and venues were top vlass. It pushed us forward on many fronts.
Murat Tunaboylu, CEO of Antiverse
Between Signal, Darktrace, the Investor sessions, former head of IBM Watson, Slack, Google X we learned from an amazingly high calibre of people. Every time a Wordnerd came back from a session they did so energised, inspired and ready to implement new ideas.
Pete Daykin, CEO of Wordnerds
At our first session in the Cotswolds we were admitting to each other how much we sleep, eat, and spend time with our partners. It was a really quick entry! Being that vulnerable, there was no going back.
Mikela Druckman, CEO of GreyParrot
Cardiff | Artificial Intelligence
Antibodies are a very successful and valuable class of drug. But discovering and developing them into new drugs is a laborious and unreliable lab-based process. Antiverse's in silico models discover and optimise new antibody candidates faster, meaning only better targeted and further optimised candidates are included in expensive clinical trials. With the top-selling antibody bringing in sales of $19.9bn in 2018, the potential is huge.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @AstroscreenHQ
Astroscreen uses AI to protect brands and defend democracy from harmful social media manipulation campaigns, also known as astroturfing. Social networks have become the new cybersecurity attack vector and Astroscreen is building the solution.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @Bibblio
Bibblio helps content owners navigate the attention economy by matching the right content to their audience through AI, thereby increasing engagement and maximising the return from content. Bibblio's AI engine runs across three tools: Circulation, Syndication and Promotion. Each targets important metrics for content owner teams.
Cambridge | Artificial Intelligence | @BIOShealth
BIOS is a leading neural engineering startup, creating the open standard hardware and software interface between the human nervous system and AI. Improving the quality of life for millions of people affected by chronic disease, they combine applied materials, machine learning, software, neuroscience with the experience of surgeons, clinicians and patients.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @CtheSignsTool
C the Signs is an award-winning platform founded by doctors. Using artificial intelligence mapped with the latest evidence, the tool is used by Doctors to identify patients at risk of cancer at the earliest and most survivable stage of the disease. Covering the entire spectrum of cancer, C the Signs can identify which cancer(s) a patient is at risk of and, what test, investigation or referral they need in less than 30 seconds. The tool is currently being used by over 1000 doctors in the NHS and trials to date have demonstrated a 30x improvement in cancer detection rates.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @Calipsa_io
Calipsa is on a mission to make the world a safer place. By building technology that transforms the detection and prevention of crime, Calipsa is empowering security professionals worldwide to make better decisions, in real-time. It uses cloud-based AI technology to identify the cause of a CCTV alarm, filtering out over 85% of false alarms and forwarding only true alarms to human operators to review.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @CausaLens
causaLens is building the next generation of autonomous predictive technology for complex, dynamic systems and presence in key global markets. With a team that consists of scientists and engineers at the top of their game, their technology processes data to understand how the global economy will develop.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @CervestEarth
Cervest helps businesses, governments and growers adapt to climate volatility. They use machine learning to generate real-time streamed ‘climate signals’ to answer questions linked to climate uncertainty, land, and natural resources. It informs decisions that help mitigate risk, safeguard food and economic security – and protect our planet.
London | Artificial Intelligence
Chosen AI is a people analytics platform that uses advanced Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning to help employers identify and optimise the potential of their existing employees. They have built a global contextual skills knowledge base that connects with existing HR systems to generate predictive insights that help align people strategies to business strategies.
Glasgow | Artificial Intelligence | @clinspecdx
ClinSpec Dx uses artificial intelligence to analyse blood for early detection of cancers and other diseases and have developed the world's first cost effective blood test for the early detection of brain tumours. Studies have shown that their technology can bring savings to healthcare service providers as well as improved quality of life for patients.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @codec_ai
Codec has built a platform that helps brands identify the audience networks that matter most to them, with rich insights into how they can win their engagement and grow. This is performed by real-time analysis of hundreds of millions of real content interactions.
Manchester | Artificial Intelligence | @DigitalBridgeHQ
DigitalBridge is a Guided Design platform that enables retailers to help their customers design and buy their dream bathroom or kitchen. Integrating directly into a retailer’s website, DigitalBridge guides their customers through the entire process, from concept to design to visualisation and completion. By reducing friction and difficult decisions, they enable retailers to shorten sales-cycles and increase conversion and revenue.
Manchester | Adtech & Marketing | Artificial Intelligence | @dreamagility
Dream Agility uses Machine Learning and Visual AI to manage every aspect of Google Ads. From using Visual AI to attribute rich data from images, to MLoD (machine learning on demand) to disrupt the agency relationship, pass on massive savings and increase uplifts.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @factmata
Factmata builds natural language processing to understand online content for what is being said, and how. Their goal is to develop a better understanding of online information, and rebuild trust in the internet.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @ flexciton_ai
Flexciton uses AI to optimise production scheduling for manufacturers. A factory production schedule dictates what should be manufactured, how and when. Creating a production schedule for just one week typically presents more than a trillion different options. Flexciton software searches through all of those options to generate the best schedule possible.
Bristol | Artificial Intelligence | @gapsquare
Gapsquare enables companies worldwide to track pay disparity, pay equality and pay gap data instantly and sustainably, building fairer workplaces and simpler processes around fair pay. Gapsquare offers AI insights around building an inclusive workplace, moving pay gap and equality analytics in-house and within the control of the company.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @Genie_AI
Genie AI uses machine learning to curate and share relevant legal knowledge within a firm or legal team, empowering lawyers to draft with the collective intelligence of the firm. Their intelligent contract editor, "SuperDrafter," analyses thousands of variations of the same clause, deducing market standards so clients can negotiate the best deal every time.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @greyparrotai
Waste composition information is key to increase recycling/recovery rates, give quality guarantee to buyers, mitigate against risks and waste crime, and understand the carbon footprint of the products and waste we generate end-to-end. Greyparrot provides AI-powered computer vision software to increase transparency and automation in recycling. Their “Automated Waste Monitoring System” is currently deployed on moving conveyor belts in recycling facilities to analyse large waste flows.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @HumanisingAuto
Humanising Autonomy is setting the global standard for how Automated Vehicles interact with people. The company has developed an intent prediction technology that predicts the full range of pedestrians and vulnerable road use behaviour across different environments and cities. As a critical perception technology, the software integrates with driver assistance systems, autonomous vehicle stacks, and smart infrastructure systems for real-time accident and near miss prevention, improving the safety and efficiency of Urban Mobility Systems across cities worldwide.
Oxford | Artificial Intelligence | @Latent_Logic
Latent Logic ensures that autonomous vehicles can coexist and interact safely with humans in the real world, at scale. A spin-out of the award-winning Computer Sciences department at Oxford University, they use machine learning to build realistic simulations of motorists, cyclists and pedestrians - critical for the development, testing and certification of autonomous vehicles.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @Monolith_AI
Monolith AI is a team of engineers, data scientists and software developers that work together to accelerate engineering through the use of AI. They have developed a software that combines AI, tailored visualisation tools and high-performance computing to enhance the productivity and knowledge of engineers, predict results ahead of time, and accelerate product development.
Ringwood | Artificial Intelligence | SaaS | @peoplematterltd
People Matter Tech’s mental wellness platform is a safe online space that measures and improves mental wellness at work, without surveys. Their AI learns who you are and how your digital environment impacts your burnout risk, offering personalised recommendations.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @pluralAI
Plural AI is building a computational engine or data science platform for finance. Their systems mine web data to help business users answer complex, business relevant questions. They are working towards becoming the default interface for knowledge work, allowing business users to access complex data science without knowing how to code.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @PredinaLtd
Predina is the new upcoming leader in automotive spatio-temporal risk. It uses AI to build a dynamic risk map platform (STARI) that predicts and prevents the risk of road crashes based on contextual (spatio-temporal data) and historical accidents. STARI makes road users aware of contextual risk and provides the safest route from A to B in real time. They license their core technology to automotive mapping partners for ADAS and AV use cases and insurance telematics.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @SenSat_AI
SenSat builds digital simulations of the real world to help computers solve complex problems. Their simulated reality platform Mapp® allows companies operating in physical domains, such as infrastructure construction, to make more informed decisions based on real site data.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @Synthesizedio
Synthesized accelerates data-driven projects with high-quality synthetic datasets that mimics original data, thereby unlocking deep insights whilst keeping original data locked down. Synthesized datasets allow partners to carry out practical analytics and research faster and more efficiently without ever needing to deal with sensitive data.
London | Artificial Intelligence
ThinkSono is an ultrasound AI company. AutoDVT is the world's first software that enables nursing staff to detect 'deep vein thrombosis' (DVT). DVT is a blood clot in the leg and is considered the number one cause of preventable hospital death.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @wluper_
Wluper is building Conversational AI at the intersection of Natural Language Processing, Dialogue, and Knowledge Bases, aiming to bring them together by leveraging deep learning. Existing voice-based assistants can only understand one-way commands, not conversations, so developing goal-driven dialogue systems is required to achieve significantly improved user experiences.
Gateshead | Artificial Intelligence | @word_nerdy
Wordnerds teach computers to understand language, make decisions and find actionable insights. Using AI and advanced linguistics, they are turning the internet into the world’s biggest focus group.
Tech Nation is proud to have so many industry leaders support our Applied AI programme.
We focus on getting in the best and most knowledgeable people to lead our sessions. The following speakers, mentors and insight peers were a part of our 1.0 programme.
Democratising and diversifying the workforce of the tech sector is hugely important to Tech Nation’s Applied AI programme. That’s why we’re excited to once again collaborate with Teens in AI. This incredible organisation aims to increase diversity and inclusion in artificial intelligence by engaging with young people aged 11 to 19, from all ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds and providing them with early exposure to AI for social good.
This initiative was launched at the AI for Good Global Summit at the UN in May 2018. Since then, the organisation has arranged a series of hackathons for different causes. Their next one is the AI Summer Accelerator from 27 July – 7 August 2020, and they need your expertise!
If you think you can inspire and empower the next generation of AI workforce, you can register to become a mentor or speaker.
Originally founded by Elena Sinel, Founder of Acorn Inspirations, the initiative is a huge opportunity for children to positively impact the AI of tomorrow and diversify the future workforce of AI by creating opportunities for children from diverse backgrounds.
“It’s vital that young people from all backgrounds have a chance to participate in our programmes. The real societal impact can only be achieved when technology that powers the world is representative of the diverse societal makeup of the world and this is exactly what Teens in AI is attempting to achieve: offer opportunities to all young people, irrespective of their gender or background, to express their voices through technology for social good.”
Elena Sinel, Founder of Acorn Aspirations & Teens in AI
If you are unsure about your eligibility or have questions about applying for the programme, here are some resources for you:
We’re working with the UK Government Office for AI as part of the AI and Data Sector Deal, to help scale the UK’s most exciting AI companies.
Find out more
10 min read
5 min read
4 min read
