If you’re a tech entrepreneur, be it aspiring, scaling or late stage, we have a programme for you. See here...
Supporting climate tech founders
Empowering underrepresented tech founders
Growing late-stage ventures, to IPO and beyond
Equipping scaleups post series A
Pitch competition for early-stage startups
Championing disabled founders and entrepreneurs innovating around disability
Work, Live, Thrive in the UK
Supporting global talent to work live and thrive in UK tech through our various support services
Discover the steps to apply and begin your journey
Gain access to a global talent alumni network to support your journey
Showcasing success stories from our Global Talent Visa Ambassadors
Understand the standards applicants need to meet to be considered for a successful endorsement
Celebrating 10 years of global talent in UK tech
Who are the next generation of UK AI unicorns? Discover the UK AI companies on track for billion dollar valuations.
It takes less than five years to build an AI unicorn – that’s according to our Tech Nation UK AI Sector Spotlight 2025 launched this month, which provides a comprehensive overview of the UK’s booming AI ecosystem.
The UK has produced 23 AI unicorns to date – companies valued at more than $1b – with UK AI unicorns produced in the past decade taking an average of just 4.8 years to reach unicorn status, faster than ever before.
UK AI success stories, like Wayve, Synthesia, and Eleven Labs are launching disruptive new products, transforming industries, and attracting billions in investment. AI voice generator, Eleven Labs, reached a $1b+ valuation just two years after launch!
So, who’s next? There are 45 AI ‘soonicorns’ in the UK – high-potential AI companies valued between $200m-$999m and tipped for unicorn status. They’re innovating across industries like enterprise software, health tech, and fintech. The majority are headquartered in London, although there are exciting regional hubs for AI development emerging across the UK. Together, they’ve raised more than $5b between them.
From AI-driven drug discovery to warehouse robots, here are 20 potential AI unicorns that should be on your radar. For the full list, download our UK AI Sector Spotlight 2025.
Founders: Nicholas Mealey (CEO) and Richard Mealey (CTO)HQ: ManchesterTotal Funding: $123mLast Round: Series CLaunch Year: 2013
Connex AI is changing the game with traditional customer interaction for businesses. It integrates intelligent AI tools to create fully customised journeys, optimise workforce operations, gamify agent performance, and streamline contact centre logistics.
Its seamless conversational intelligence across voice and digital channels pushes the boundaries of customer experience innovation, positioning it as the 6th fastest-growing tech company in the north of the UK.
Founders: Humayun Sheikh (CEO), Toby Simpson (COO), and Thomas Hain (CSO)HQ: CambridgeTotal Funding: $112mLast Round: Late VCLaunch Year: 2017
Fetch.ai democratises access to AI technology by providing an open marketplace for AI Agents. This allows developers to access secure datasets and build multi-agent systems powered by LLMs and AI.
The model is rooted in essentially any complex digital system that relies on large scale datasets, this covers cases such as optimising DeFi trading services, transportation networks, smart energy grids, travel, and so on.
Founder: Josh PayneHQ: LondonTotal Funding: $185mLast Round: Series ALaunch Year: 2023
Describing itself as a ‘hyperscaler’ engineered for AI, Nscale is driven by its vision to redefine the boundaries of AI and high performance computing through innovative, sustainable solutions.
From data centres to its software stack, Nscale is vertically integrated throughout Europe, with plans to expand the Glomfjord data centre in Norway this year, doubling the site’s capacity.
Founder: Mahdi YahyaHQ: LondonTotal Funding: $193mLast Round: Late VCLaunch Year: 2018
Ori Industries is the first AI Infrastructure provider with the native expertise, comprehensive capabilities and end-to-endless flexibility to support any model, team, or scale. It provides companies with pay-as-you-go cloud-based access to high performance compute for AI model training, by partnering with data centres across Europe.
In February, it raised $140m to scale its infrastructure, and says a larger raise is currently underway and expected to close in 2025.
Founders: Allister Furey and Samuel GillHQ: LondonTotal Funding: $97mLast Round: Series BLaunch Year: 2020
Sylvera believes that better data and tools will accelerate meaningful climate investments, helping the world reach net zero faster.
Going net zero demands the biggest economic shift in history, and Sylvera has built the data infrastructure needed to transform climate strategy into real actionable investments and corporate strategy.
Founder: Guy PodjarnyHQ: LondonTotal Funding: $125mLast Round: Series ALaunch Year: 2024
Many businesses have attempted to build AI to code software, but Tessl is leading the pack, reimagining software development for the AI era. Using AI Native Development, Tessl’s platform allows a faster, more flexible approach to developers and their teams.
At the end of last year, Tessl quietly raised $125m across a Seed and Series A, with a current valuation of over $500m.
Founders: Eldar Tuvey and Roy TuveyHQ: LondonTotal Funding: $102mLast Round: Series CLaunch Year: 2021Vertice is simplifying procurement by making every buying decision faster, more transparent, and enriched by data and insights. It provides unified SaaS purchasing solutions, allowing businesses to keep visibility on their procurement.
Founders: Nikola Mrkšić, Tsung-Hsien Wen, and Pei-Hao SuHQ: LondonTotal Funding: $118mLast Round: Series CLaunch Year: 2017
PolyAI describes itself is having the world’s most engaging, dynamic, and lifelike AI agents, delivering on a mission to resolve over 50% of calls and enhance customer experience.
It is reimagining customer service by leveraging AI to build a conversational platform that lets customers speak naturally, interrupt, change topics, and solve problems .
Founders: Dr. Michelle He and Gerald ChappellHQ: LondonTotal Funding: $203mLast Round: Lending CapitalLaunch Year: 2020
Over 15 million people in the UK struggle to borrow for unexpected costs, or get rejected for loans by high street banks. Sky-high interest rates and endless debt-cycles have ruined the consumer lending market – and Abound is on a mission to fix it.
Abound offers low-cost, fair, and flexible lending solutions of up to £10000, which serve borrowers interests and their long-term financial health.
Founder: Alexander BrexendorffHQ: LondonTotal Funding: $168mLast Round: Late VCLaunch Year: 2016QuantoPay allows users to spend money both smarter, and safer. It has a fully streamlined and transparent blockchain-enabled system, allowing you to transfer money quickly and securely, with no hidden charges.
This structure provides fintech solutions for everyone, giving people the freedom to spend, receive and transfer money through their smartphones, which is especially important for people who have no access to financial management facilities.
Founder: Mark Kotter and Florian SchusterHQ: CambridgeTotal Funding: $175mLast Round: Late VCLaunch Year: 2016Bit.bio is rewriting human health, one cell at a time. It uses deterministic cell programming to create any human cell type which can be used for research, drug discovery, and cell therapy. It is able to code the cells at scale with both precision, and consistency.
Founder: Dr. Lee CroninHQ: GlasgowTotal Funding: $48mLast Round: GRANTLaunch Year: 2019
Chemify is on a journey to digitise chemistry and enable the execution of chemical code for drug discvoery, chemical synthesis, and materials discovery. The technology enables the full stack digitisation of chemical processes, making the synthesis of complex new molecules faster and accurately reproducible, creating functional libraries at scale.
Founders: Ali Tavassoli and Simon KerryHQ: SouthamptonTotal Funding: $53mLast Round: Series ALaunch Year: 2019
As we look for new innovative ways to treat challenging diseases, Curve Therapeutics is ahead of the game. Its revolutionary gene-encoded Microcycle platform unlocks the potential of intracellular targets through functional screening against diseases.
It uses mammalian cell-based technology to build a pipeline of drugs with a focus on cancer, immunology and inflammation.
Founder: Dr Tim GuilliamsHQ: CambridgeTotal Funding: $137mLast Round: Series CLaunch Year: 2014
Also pioneering in drug discover is Healx, who is creating AI-powered, patient-inspired treatments for rare diseases. Its platform redevelops, combines, and enhances compounds to find new connections between drugs and diseases.
These connections are then used to accelerate new treatments and work through to clinical trials and on to patients.
Founder: Dr. Simon KohlHQ: LondonTotal Funding: $59mLast Round: Series ALaunch Year: 2023
Latent Labs is an AI lab building generative models to make biology programmable, transforming health and sustainability. Leveraging breakthrough generative AI, it gains control over molecular biology, creating new antibodies, optimising existing enzymes, and advancing genetic engineering.
Founders: Michael Young, Meri Beckwith, and Nik HaldimannHQ: LondonTotal Funding: $79mLast Round: Series BLaunch Year: 2021
Lindus Health has created the ‘anti-CRO’ for life science pioneers. Its new CRO model runs end to end clinical studies through a risk sharing business model, without the headaches, delays, or costs. This allows more reliable and effective clinical trials, hugely benefitting the future of biotech and pharma companies.
Founder: Dr. Jamieson ChristmasHQ: Milton KeynesTotal Funding: $150mLast Round: Series CLaunch Year: 2018
Envisics is redefining how we see and interact with the world through manipulating light at its most fundamental level. It. has developed the Dynamic Holography Platform, holographic technology for augmented reality head-up displays and automotive sensor systems.
Holographic augmented reality overlays timely and relevant information within the driver’s field of view, reducing the need for the driver to take their eyes off of the road, improving road safety and enhancing the ability to make more informed decisions.
Founders: Paul Newman and Ingmar PosnerHQ: OxfordTotal Funding: $231mLast Round: Series CLaunch Year: 2018
Oxa was founded with the vision to build software that enables any vehicle to be self-driving, anywhere, at any time. A decade and over 400 people later, its Universal Autonomy™ is accelerating the transition to self-driving technology with software solutions allowing businesses to deploy autonomy safely, securely, and efficiently.
Founders: Andrei Danescu, Oana Jinga and Adrian NegoitaHQ: HastingsTotal Funding: $94mLast Round: Series CLaunch Year: 2018
Built on a mission to empower business to achieve unmatched productivity and precision in their warehouses, Dexory is revolutionising operations with AI-powered real-time visibility. It combining autonomous robots with live data insights to optimise efficiency and streamline supply chains.
Founder: Dr Somayeh TaheriHQ: ManchesterTotal Funding: $75mLast Round: Series BLaunch Year: 2017
UrbanChain is striving to change the monopoly in the energy market and make green energy affordable for everyone. It’s the leading provider of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy exchange services in the UK, serving generators of renewable energy and corporate consumers that want true, affordable green energy.
For the full list of UK AI companies on track for unicorn status, download our UK AI Sector Spotlight 2025.
Main Image: Guy Podjarny, Founder of Tessl.
