10 Best AI Companies in UK in 2024
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a must-have for global technology companies, including giants like Google, Amazon and Microsoft. However, it is not only Big Tech that is making AI strides—the UK is home to an expanding set of startups and scaleups creating their own AI technologies and new applications for machine learning algorithms and data science. The UK, with its major industries such as cybersecurity, healthcare automation, chatbots or self-driving vehicles among others is the hub of AI in this world on the brink of greatness. This article reviews ten best AI start-ups in British market that are leading in 2024 detailing their achievements, financing and contributions to the overall AI domain.
The State of Artificial Intelligence in the UK
UK’s 1,546 AI firms hitting one or more high growth signals across Britain indicates ambitious growth plans and future potential success thus making it one of the top destinations for such firms. Since 2022 Brainpool AI emerged as key players in the UK’s booming market for artificial intelligence. Collective equity investment into UK’s AI companies went up from £8.48bn in 2022 to £12.4bn over 4534 funding rounds making it amongst the most funded sectors second only to fintech within the UK.
In this annual ranking, we profile the private AI startups and scaleups that have secured the most investment in the UK so far. Keep reading to find out which are currently considered to be among the top ten British-based suppliers of artificial intelligence by value raised.
Here is the list of the top 10 AI Companies in UK in 2024:
- Graphcore
Amount raised: £528m
Equity rounds: 9
Founded: 2015
Location: Bristol
Basically an integrated circuit company dealing with semiconductors (Graphcore), they design chips specifically meant to accelerate artificial intelligence workloads through manufacturing process. These chips are built using IPU (Intelligence Process Unit) Technology by Graphcore where there are separate IPU-Cores each with 1472 which can carry out separate computation threads numbering 8832. Since its inception, the company has evolved significantly, and it has raised over half a billion dollars in investments while partnering with big names like Dell Technologies and Microsoft. With offices located in London, Cambridge, Oslo, Beijing, Seoul and across the US Graphcore leads in AI hardware innovation.
2. Thought Machine
Total amount raised: £392m
Total equity rounds: 8
Established: 2011
Location: Islington
Thought Machine is a fintech software development company that produces blockchain-based operating systems for banks and financial service providers. Using an application programming interface (API), the core banking platforms provided by Thought Machine come with a large AI content to enhance the legacy system’s cost, speed and adaptability. Investors like Molten Ventures, IQ Capital, and British Patient Capital have given it £392m in growth capital. This made it get into the list of unicorns on July 2020.
3. Cera
Total amount raised: £366m
Total equity rounds: 9
Established: 2015
Location: Islington
Cera is a digital health start-up that offers homecare services, telehealth consultations, and prescription services via an app which lets users book appointments with nurses immediately they need them. The nine funding rounds conducted by Cera have yielded £366 million in total investments from various sources such as Guinness Ventures and 8090 Partners. It has been included in several accelerators including Govstart and DigitalHealth. London Accelerator which indicate its growing presence in the digital health industry.
4. Gousto
Total amount raised: £321m
Total equity rounds: 14
Established: 2012
Location: Shepherds Bush
Gousto provides meal delivery kits containing all necessary ingredients as well as exact portions customers need along with detailed instructions on cooking these meals at home. Joe Wicks, popular fitness coach, Softbank – a Japanese investment behemoth backed this firm which had AI from inception due to its use of artificial intelligence technology. Meanwhile Gousto has done fourteen funding cycles overall raising three hundred twenty one million pounds (£321M) including fifty million pound (£50M) investment made during February 2023. It has appeared on numerous high-growth indexes and was one of the Future Fifty companies in 2017.
Quantexa
Quantexa, a firm in cybersecurity industry, is using AI technology to protect clients’ data and identify illegal activities. The organization partners with the industries that process big data such as finance and e-commerce to build models for analyzing this information so as to understand threat points of such data and make better decisions. It has received £286m from investors like AlbionVC, Accenture, among others. Quantexa has participated in Microsoft ScaleUp accelerator, Tech Nation’s Future Fifty accelerator and featured in high-growth lists.
Patsnap
Patsnap provides patent search services through its web-based platform showing patent expiry dates, licensing, renewal, legal information etc. Additionally, their platform is also capable of reading complex documents such as court records or clinical trials due to algorithms based on artificial intelligence technology that apply natural language processing capabilities (NLP). The company serves over 10k customers from more than fifty countries including NASA and Tesla among others. Patsnap raised money during four rounds reaching £251m.
Huma
Huma was previously known as Medopad before establishing an online portal for medical institutions to store patients’ health records electronically. They promote digital health insights while producing wearables that can detect digital biomarkers which show real-time health conditions of users. The company has generated funding worth £236m including investors such as Nexus Investments and Healthbox. Its acquisitions include Tarilian, BioBeats among others for improved digital health capacity building operations.
Lendable
Total amount raised: £216m
Total equity rounds: 7
Established: 2014
Location: Hackney
Lendable is a fintech start-up that is currently working on creating a P2P loan marketplace for borrowers. To this end, it has developed artificial intelligence software that matches borrowers with lenders and uses automated underwriting to process loans rapidly. It has added locations in Nairobi, Singapore and New York since then and has raised £216 million from investors over a total of seven rounds. In addition, Lendable was included in some of the fastest growing firms listings and participated in Addleshaw Goddard’s AG Elevate accelerator scheme.
Callsign
Total amount raised: £215m
Total equity rounds: 5
Established: 2010
Location: City of London
Callsign provides passive authentication as well as fraud protection for seamless customer interactions. The company’s AI-driven technology mimics human recognition patterns. Among them include JP Morgan as well as NightDragon Security who have invested £215 million in Callsign. Visa named the business its “preferred behavioural biometrics and device intelligence identity partner across Europe” while adding that it is also the world’s fastest-growing behavioural authentication and intelligence firm.
Oxa
Total worth of raising: £185m
Total funding rounds: 5
Established: 2014
Location: Oxford.
Oxa designs software that enables driverless cars use cameras and lasers to see and drive on the road. In 2023, Oxa was listed in the United Kingdom’s Advanced Manufacturing Plan, which committed £150m to boost self-driving car industry. Five fund-raising efforts have brought in a total of £185m for Oxa, including a major sum of £113m invested in December 2022 aimed at scaling its software into more industries.
The Future of AI Companies in the UK.
UK boasts a rich set of AI companies each adding their unique touch to the development of artificial intelligence. Whether they are contributing towards research, solving complex problems or making AI more accessible, these firms play a leading role in shaping technology’s future in 2024. As businesses strive to navigate complexities within digital age, teaming up with top AI developers would help them find new solutions for innovation and this could lead to success.
UK-based AI firms are expected to be instrumental in defining the course of sectors like healthcare, finance, manufacturing and cyber security. Integrating Artificial Intelligence technologies into all these sectors is capable of bringing about enormous efficiencies improvement within decision-making processes and economic growth as well. The UK government has shown its commitment towards promoting innovations by supporting projects like The Turing Artificial Intelligence Fellowships among other initiatives aimed at enhancing research on artificial intelligence thus making it clear that United Kingdom is positioning itself as global leader on this issue.
Conclusion
In the dynamic world of artificial intelligence, the United Kingdom has emerged as an innovation center with cutting-edge technology developments. The top ten UK-based AI firms’ names for 2024 demonstrate how much AI research and development is taking place and suggest how things might look tomorrow when it comes to this transformative technology area. These organizations include chip manufacturing companies, Semiconductors, and Fintech software providers among others that are transforming the industries to create a smarter, efficient world. The rest of the world will be forced to keep pace as the UK AI industry is poised to lead this charge, innovating and setting new benchmarks in the field.
