---
title: "Top 100 UK Startups: The Companies You Should Know in 2026"
url: "https://bizztor.com/guides/top-100-uk-startups/"
author: "Mamta Chhikara"
author_url: "https://bizztor.com/author/mamtachhikara/"
date_published: "2026-10-28T13:40:07.177Z"
date_modified: "2026-10-28T14:01:50.402Z"
category: "Guides"
description: "The 100 UK startups worth knowing in 2026, by sector, with what each company builds, where it is based and the funding it has actually raised."
publisher: "Bizztor"
---

# Top 100 UK Startups: The Companies You Should Know in 2026

> The 100 UK startups worth knowing in 2026, by sector, with what each company builds, where it is based and the funding it has actually raised.

**These are the 100 UK startups worth knowing in 2026, from Revolut and Octopus Energy to companies that came out of stealth this year with nine-figure cheques, grouped by sector with what each one builds and what it has actually raised.**

Most lists of this kind are built on one metric and quietly flatter it. A ranking by headcount growth rewards companies hiring fast and penalises a twelve-person lab holding a patent that matters. A ranking by valuation rewards whoever raised most recently.

This one is built differently. Companies are grouped by sector rather than ranked against each other, because a fusion reactor and a matcha drinks brand cannot be usefully compared, and the numbering is for navigation rather than position.

Every funding figure here is attributed to a named source. Where sources disagree, that is stated rather than averaged out. Where a company has been acquired, has gone public or is in difficulty, that is stated too, and the final section names the companies left out and why.

## How this list was put together

Four things got a company on it.

It is headquartered in the UK, with the operating business here and not just a registered office. It is privately held and independently run, so corporate subsidiaries are flagged where they appear. It has either raised serious money or built something commercially real. And something has actually happened in the past 18 months, rather than an impressive round in 2021 and silence since.

Where a company fails one of those tests but is too well known to leave unexplained, it appears with the failure stated plainly rather than being silently dropped.

Headcounts are approximate and come from company statements or reporting. For private companies, headcount and valuation are often simply not disclosed, and nothing here is estimated to fill a gap.

## What UK startup funding looks like in 2026

The backdrop matters for reading any list like this.

UK startups raised £3.79bn across 183 rounds in the third quarter of 2026, on [Bizztor's UK funding data](https://bizztor.com/uk-funding-data/), which excludes debt. That was down 42% on the second quarter and 23% on the same quarter a year earlier, and the thinnest quarter for deal count since the start of 2025.

The money did not thin out, though. The median disclosed round rose from £4.3m to £6.5m year on year, and the ten largest rounds took 55% of the quarter's total.

Fewer cheques, bigger cheques, and a widening gap between companies that can raise at scale and those that cannot. Seven of the ten largest rounds were London.

Two investor names now recur in the biggest deals: the UK Sovereign AI Fund, a £500m state-backed vehicle launched in April 2026, and the NATO Innovation Fund.

## AI and machine learning

**1. [ElevenLabs](https://elevenlabs.io/)** | London and New York | Founded 2022 | around 165 staff Generative AI audio: voice creation, cloning, dubbing and translation, plus conversational voice agents. It signed a multi-year agreement with Universal Music Group and reportedly doubled its valuation to $22bn in September 2026. One caveat for a UK list: it is widely reported as US-incorporated, and its own headquarters is given as London and New York.

**2. [Synthesia](https://synthesia.io/)** | London | Founded 2017 Generative AI video with presenter-style digital avatars. Co-founded by Victor Riparbelli, Steffen Tjerrild, Professor Lourdes Agapito of UCL and Professor Matthias Niessner. Its $200m Series E in January 2026 was led by Google Ventures with NVIDIA's venture arm participating, at a $4bn post-money valuation, roughly double its previous mark. Over $500m raised since 2017 and ARR above $150m.

**3. [Recursive Superintelligence](https://recursive.com/)** | London and San Francisco | Founded 2025 Self-improving AI systems that automate AI research, using an open-endedness approach where the system generates its own challenges and environments. Co-founded by Richard Socher and Tim Rocktäschel. It raised $650m in May 2026 led by GV and Greycroft, with AMD Ventures and NVIDIA participating, at a $4.65bn valuation. Fewer than 30 researchers and engineers.

**4. [Ineffable Intelligence](https://www.ineffable.ai/)** | UK | Founded 2025 Algorithms that learn from interacting with an environment rather than from static datasets. Led by David Silver, the UCL professor who ran reinforcement learning at Google DeepMind. Its $1.1bn seed round in April 2026 drew the UK Sovereign AI Unit alongside Sequoia, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Index, Google, EQT and DST Global. No lead investor has been named and no city confirmed publicly, which is unusual at that size.

**5. [Machenta](https://machenta.com/)** | London | Founded 2025 Trains robot models entirely in simulation so a robot can learn a new task from one human demonstration. Founded by Imperial professor Edward Johns and PhD student Vitalis Vosylius. Its $40m seed in October 2026, co-led by Creandum and Union Square Ventures, is [the largest seed round a UK robotics company has raised](https://bizztor.com/news/machenta-raises-40m-robotics-seed/). Eleven people, no product, no customers.

**6. [PolyAI](https://poly.ai/)** | London | Founded 2017 Voice AI agents handling enterprise customer service calls. A Cambridge spinout founded by Nikola Mrkšić, Tsung-Hsien Wen and Pei-Hao Su. Its $86m Series D in December 2025 was co-led by Georgian, Hedosophia and Khosla Ventures, including £15m from the British Business Bank.

**7. [Granola](https://granola.ai/)** | London | Founded 2023 | around 105 staff An AI notepad for meetings that records, transcribes and produces summaries and action items. It raised $125m in a Series C in 2026 at a $1.5bn valuation, following a $43m Series B in May 2025.

**8. [Fyxer](https://fyxer.com/)** | London | Founded 2024 | around 60 staff An AI assistant for email and meetings that organises inboxes, drafts replies, takes notes and chases follow-ups. OpenAI publicly described it as tackling one of AI's hardest jobs.

**9. [Quantexa](https://quantexa.com/)** | London | Founded 2016 | over 800 staff Decision intelligence software linking large datasets into entity networks, used mainly for financial crime, fraud and know-your-customer work. Six co-founders, led by Vishal Marria. Its $175m Series F in March 2025 was led by Teachers' Venture Growth at a $2.6bn valuation, up from roughly $1.8bn in 2023.

**10. [Basecamp Research](https://basecamp-research.com/)** | London | Founded 2019 Biological foundation models built on its own global biodiversity DNA dataset, gathered through benefit-sharing partnerships in more than 30 countries, used to design proteins and cell therapies. Founded by Glen Gowers and Oliver Vince. Its $140m Series C in September 2026 was led by S32, with Anthropic and NVIDIA among the backers, taking total funding to $225m.

**11. [PhysicsX](https://physicsx.ai/)** | London Machine learning surrogate models that replace slow physics simulation in engineering and advanced manufacturing. Co-founded by Jacomo Corbo and Robin Tuluie. It raised a $135m Series B in June 2025. Its founding year is reported inconsistently across sources, so treat any single figure with care.

**12. [Latent Labs](https://latentlabs.com/)** | London and San Francisco | Founded 2023 AI foundation models for generative protein design, letting partners computationally design antibodies and enzymes. Founded by Dr Simon Kohl, formerly co-lead of DeepMind's protein design team and an AlphaFold2 researcher. It emerged from stealth in February 2025 with $50m total funding, including a $40m Series A co-led by Radical Ventures and Sofinnova Partners.

**13. [Luminance](https://www.luminance.com/)** | Cambridge | Founded 2015 | around 150 staff AI contract analysis and automated negotiation across the contract lifecycle. Its $75m Series C in February 2025 was led by Point72 Private Investments, Steve Cohen's firm, after headcount grew 80% in 2024. One flag: it is reported as registered in the British Virgin Islands with a US headquarters in New York, so its UK status rests on the Cambridge research operation.

**14. [Solve Intelligence](https://solveintelligence.com/)** | London and New York | Founded 2023 | around 55 staff AI software for patent and IP teams, covering drafting, prosecution, claim charts and invention harvesting. It raised a $40m Series B in late 2025.

**15. [nPlan](https://nplan.io/)** | London | Founded 2017 Machine learning trained on more than 750,000 completed construction schedules, forecasting delay and cost-overrun risk on capital projects. Co-founded by Dev Amratia. Its $16m Series B in October 2025 was led by CapHorn, with Chevron Technology Ventures and Suffolk Technologies.

**16. [Stability AI](https://stability.ai/)** | London | Founded 2019 Generative models across image, video, audio and 3D, best known for Stable Diffusion. Founded by Emad Mostaque and Cyrus Hodes; Prem Akkaraju has been chief executive since June 2024. Its $76m Series B in August 2026 brought in Electronic Arts, Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music and AMD Ventures, with no lead named, taking total funding to $232m. Proof that a hard reset is survivable.

## AI infrastructure and silicon

**17. [Nscale](https://www.nscale.com/)** | London | Founded 2024 | around 415 staff Builds and runs AI data centres and GPU cloud infrastructure across Europe, North America and Asia. Founded by Josh Payne and Nathan Townsend. In September 2026 it announced $3.36bn of pre-IPO convertible financing led by Third Point, comprising $2.36bn at closing and a $1bn NVIDIA commitment expected mid-November. That followed a $2bn Series C in March 2026 at a $14.6bn valuation, co-led by Aker ASA and 8090 Industries.

**18. [Olix](https://olix.com/)** | London | Founded 2024 Custom AI inference silicon with an optical interconnect, pitched as a GPU alternative; its DX-1 decode accelerator uses on-chip SRAM rather than HBM. Founded by James Dacombe. Its $312m Series B in August 2026 valued it at $3.3bn, with Arm, Hudson River Trading and the UK Sovereign AI Fund participating. No lead investor has been identified, so descriptions of it as an Arm-led round are wrong.

**19. [Fractile](https://fractile.ai/)** | London | Founded 2022 In-memory-compute chips for AI inference, claiming large speed and energy gains over GPUs. Founded by Dr Walter Goodwin. Its $220m Series B closed in May 2026, led by Accel, Founders Fund and Factorial Funds. Bloomberg reported in August that it was in advanced talks on roughly $600m at a $6.5bn pre-money valuation. That has not closed and should not be reported as raised.

**20. [Salience Labs](https://www.saliencelabs.ai/)** | Oxford All-optical photonic switches connecting thousands of GPUs across data centre racks. Co-founded by Vaysh Kewada, out of Oxford and Münster. Its $125m Series B in October 2026 was led by Bullhound Capital, with both AMD and Intel participating, a rare combination.

## Autonomy, robotics and industrial automation

A fuller treatment of this sector, including the government's £40m Robotics Adoption Hubs programme, is in our [guide to UK robotics startups](https://bizztor.com/guides/uk-robotics-startups-companies/).

**21. [Wayve](https://wayve.ai/)** | London | Founded 2017 | around 1,000 staff End-to-end deep learning for self-driving, using camera data rather than HD maps or lidar, licensed to carmakers. Founded in Cambridge by Amar Shah and Alex Kendall. Its $1.2bn Series D in February 2026 was co-led by Eclipse, Balderton and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, taking total funding to about $1.5bn at an $8.6bn valuation. In September 2026 it put 15 supervised robotaxis on London roads with Uber. The largest venture-backed technology company the UK has produced.

**22. [Humanoid](https://thehumanoid.ai/)** | London | Founded 2024 | around 180 staff The HMND 01 robot platform in bipedal and wheeled versions, running its own KinetIQ software on NVIDIA Jetson Thor compute. Its $152m Series A in July 2026 was led by Prime Movers Lab at a $1.35bn valuation, with Bosch and Schaeffler participating. Bosch is also its contract manufacturer, and Schaeffler has committed to deploying 1,000 to 2,000 wheeled units by 2032.

**23. [Oxa](https://oxa.tech/)** | Oxford | Founded 2014 Autonomy software for repetitive industrial driving at ports, airports, factories and solar farms, across 20-plus vehicle types and without relying on GPS. Founded by Paul Newman and Ingmar Posner. Its Series D first close in March 2026 brought in $103m, including £37m from the UK National Wealth Fund, with NVIDIA's NVentures participating.

**24. [Dexory](https://www.dexory.com/)** | Wallingford, Oxfordshire | Founded 2015 Autonomous robots that patrol warehouse aisles, scan every pallet position and feed a digital twin. Founded as BotsAndUs by Andrei Danescu, Adrian Negoita and Oana Jinga. Its October 2025 Series C was announced at $165m with a $100m equity portion led by Eurazeo, followed by £8.5m from the British Business Bank in March 2026. It now calls Nashville its US headquarters.

**25. [Slamcore](https://www.slamcore.com/)** | London | Founded 2016 Visual positioning software tracking forklifts and vehicles inside buildings from a single stereo camera, with no beacons or floor markers. An Imperial spinout led by Owen Nicholson. It raised $14m in May 2026, with Rockwell Automation's venture arm joining Toyota Ventures, MMC and IP Group.

**26. [Dogtooth Technologies](https://dogtooth.tech/)** | Melbourn, Cambridgeshire | Founded 2014 Robots that identify ripe strawberries and raspberries by computer vision and pick them without bruising. Led by co-founder Dr Duncan Robertson. It raised over £14m in July 2026, combining equity from 24Haymarket, EMV Capital and ACF Investors with Innovate UK grants and a leasing facility. No source names the round type or a lead.

**27. [Touchlab](https://www.touchlab.io/)** | Edinburgh | Founded 2018 A thin, retrofittable electronic skin giving robots a sense of touch, sensitive enough to roll a pen or detect slip. Founded by Dr Zaki Hussein, now based inside the National Robotarium. It won a £1m contract under ARIA's Robot Dexterity programme in November 2025.

**28. [Open Bionics](https://openbionics.com/)** | Bristol | Founded 2014 3D-printed, clinically approved multi-grip bionic hands for people with below-elbow limb difference. Founded by Joel Gibbard and Samantha Payne out of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory incubator, now past 1,000 users. Its Hero PRO and Hero RGD launched in April 2025.

**29. [Isembard](https://isembard.com/)** | UK | Founded 2024 Runs and franchises AI-operated precision manufacturing factories making components for space, defence and robotics, with software covering quoting, scheduling, supply chain and quality control. Founded by Alexander Fitzgerald, previously of broadband provider Cuckoo. Its $50m Series A in March 2026 was led by Union Square Ventures.

**30. [Nyobolt](https://www.nyobolt.com/)** | Cambridge | Founded 2019 Fast-charging lithium-ion batteries using niobium-based anodes, for robotics, electric vehicles, industrial tools and data centre power. Founded by Professor Clare Grey and Dr Sai Shivareddy. Its $60m Series C in May 2026 was led by Symbotic at a $1bn valuation, taking total funding to around $160m. Worth knowing: its 2023 accounts carried a going-concern warning, and it has raised twice since.

**31. [Kinematic Trees](https://kinematictrees.com/)** | Sheffield | Founded 2025 A robot-agnostic software layer so the same capabilities transfer across different hardware. Founded by Sheffield computational neuroscientist Dr Stuart Wilson and Daniel Camilleri. It raised £585,000 in pre-seed funding in July 2026, backed by Haatch through its SEIS fund.

## Fintech

**32. [Revolut](https://revolut.com/)** | London | Founded 2015 Accounts, foreign exchange, cards, trading and crypto in one app, with over 65 million customers. A November 2025 secondary share sale valued it at $75bn, with Coatue, Greenoaks, Dragoneer and Fidelity leading and NVIDIA's NVentures and Andreessen Horowitz joining the register. FY2024 revenue was £3.1bn with £1.1bn pre-tax profit. No new primary capital was raised in that transaction.

**33. [Monzo](https://monzo.com/)** | London | Founded 2015 | 5,275 staff App-based current accounts. Its last confirmed valuation event was an October 2024 employee share sale at $5.9bn. It holds a full UK banking licence, secured an Irish licence in December 2025 and exited the US market in March 2026. Reports in October 2026 of Nubank takeover talks ending could not be confirmed against a working source, so treat the figures circulating with that story as unverified.

**34. [Starling Bank](https://starlingbank.com/)** | London | Founded 2014 | around 4,100 staff App-based banking, and increasingly a software business: its Engine platform is licensed to banks abroad and reported £70m of committed annual recurring revenue. FY26 revenue was £887.4m with £217.1m pre-tax profit, a fifth consecutive profitable year, on 6.2m accounts. Founder Anne Boden sold her remaining 2.7% stake privately in October 2026 for about £45m, implying roughly £1.7bn, though a sale between existing shareholders does not set a market value.

**35. [Checkout.com](https://checkout.com/)** | London | Founded 2012 Enterprise online payment processing, founded by Guillaume Pousaz. Its most recent valuation event is a markdown rather than a raise: $12bn in September 2025, set internally under US fair-market-value rules alongside an employee buyback, down from $40bn at its January 2022 Series D. Included because the fall is as instructive as the rise.

**36. [Zilch](https://zilch.com/)** | London | Founded 2018 An ad-subsidised payments network offering pay-now and interest-free instalments. Founded by Philip Belamant, Serge Belamant and Sean O'Connor. It raised over $175m in combined debt and equity in November 2025, led by KKCG, including an expanded Deutsche Bank securitisation facility. Its last stated valuation was $2bn in 2021.

**37. [Marshmallow](https://marshmallow.com/)** | London Motor insurance priced for people who have recently moved to the UK and are penalised by standard models. Co-founded by Oliver Kent-Braham. It raised about £68m in equity and debt in April 2025 with Portage, BlackRock and Columbia Lake Partners, taking its valuation past £1.5bn.

**38. [Thought Machine](https://thoughtmachine.net/)** | UK | Founded 2014 | around 530 staff Cloud-native core banking licensed to banks through its Vault platform. Founded by Paul Taylor. It took £30m from an unnamed tier one bank client within £80m raised across the recent period, including a previously unpublicised £44.8m round filed in July 2025. Revenue has passed $100m annually. Not to be confused with Thinking Machines Lab.

**39. [10x Banking](https://10xbanking.com/)** | UK | Founded 2015 Another cloud-native core banking platform, founded and led by former Barclays chief executive Antony Jenkins. It raised £40m in equity and debt from AshGrove Capital in August 2026, following about £34m in 2024 from existing backers BlackRock and JP Morgan.

**40. [Form3](https://form3.tech/)** | UK Cloud payments infrastructure processing account-to-account payments for banks and payment service providers. Its $60m Series C extension brought in British Patient Capital, taking disclosed funding to about $220m. No 2025 or 2026 round could be confirmed, which is worth knowing.

**41. [Allica Bank](https://allica.bank/)** | London and Milton Keynes | Founded 2019 | around 799 staff Lending, savings and current accounts for established UK SMEs, extended into invoice finance through its 2025 acquisition of Kriya. Its $155m Series D in February 2026 valued it at nearly $1.2bn, making it a new UK unicorn, with Ventura Capital, GLG and Sona AM joining TCV and Blue Owl.

**42. [OakNorth](https://oaknorth.co.uk/)** | London | Founded 2015 Lends to mid-sized businesses in the UK and US and sells its credit analysis software. Led by co-founder Rishi Khosla, with more than $16bn lent since launch. Now an acquirer too, agreeing a stock-for-stock deal for Michigan-based Community Unity Bank in March 2025.

**43. [Tide](https://tide.co/)** | London | over 2,500 staff A business banking and admin platform for SMEs, not itself a bank. It raised over $120m in primary and secondary investment in September 2025 from TPG's The Rise Funds, with existing investor Apax Digital, at a $1.5bn valuation. 1.6m members worldwide.

**44. [Moneybox](https://moneyboxapp.com/)** | UK | Founded 2015 Saving and investing app covering ISAs, pensions and the Lifetime ISA, founded by Ben Stanway and Charlie Mortimer, with more than £23bn under administration. It planned an employee share sale of up to £45m at an £800m valuation through the PISCES regime, about 45% above its 2024 mark. That is employee liquidity, not new capital.

**45. [Lendable](https://lendable.co.uk/)** | London | Founded 2014 AI-driven consumer lending, originating and servicing loans for institutional investors across personal loans, the Zable credit card and car finance. Founded by Martin Kissinger, Victoria van Lennep, Paul Pamment and Jakob Schwarz. Its £210m round in March 2022, led by Ontario Teachers', valued it at about £3.5bn. No equity round since. Expanded into Mexico in 2026.

**46. [Xelix](https://xelix.com/)** | London | Founded 2018 Agentic AI for accounts payable, processing more than 115m invoices a year for over 130 clients. Its $160m Series B, led by Insight Partners, landed around July 2025 and is one of the larger UK B2B software rounds of the period.

**47. [Ryft](https://ryftpay.com/)** | Manchester | Founded 2021 Payment infrastructure for marketplaces and multi-location businesses. Founded by Alex Mackenzie, Richard Kirby and Sadra Hosseini. Its £20m Series B in September 2026, led by Gresham House Ventures, was billed as the largest payments Series B raised by a UK company, and is a rare large fintech round outside London.

**48. [Hyperlayer](https://www.hyperlayer.com/)** | UK Banking middleware helping institutions add channels and products, expanding into the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific. It raised a £19.5m Series A in late October 2026 led by Flintlock Capital.

**49. [ClearToken](https://cleartoken.io/)** | London | Founded 2022 | around 35 staff Clearing and settlement infrastructure for digital assets, aimed at institutions settling transactions across cryptoassets, stablecoins and conventional currency. It has been approved to operate inside the Bank of England's Digital Securities Sandbox.

**50. [Novabook](https://novabook.com/)** | London | Founded 2024 | around 70 staff Accounting services and financial software for startups, covering bookkeeping, payroll and admin. Its chief executive recently said it handles accounting for 1,000 startups and SMEs.

## Health, biotech and life sciences

UK venture investment in biotech in the first half of 2026 exceeded every full-year total from 2022 to 2025, driven largely by one round.

**51. [Isomorphic Labs](https://isomorphiclabs.com/)** | London | Founded 2021 AI drug design built on AlphaFold-derived models, founded by Sir Demis Hassabis. Its $2.1bn Series B in May 2026 was led by Thrive Capital with Alphabet and GV participating, following $600m in April 2025. Flagged clearly: it is a Google DeepMind spinout and a subsidiary of Alphabet, so it is not an independent startup. Reported round sizes vary between $2.1bn, $1.6bn and £1.55bn across outlets, so use the company's own release.

**52. [CMR Surgical](https://cmrsurgical.com/)** | Cambridge | Founded 2014 Versius, a modular robot-assisted keyhole surgery system whose independent arms move between operating theatres. It won FDA clearance for Versius Plus in December 2025, and in October 2026 Stryker invested $400m of preferred equity, taking an exclusive option to buy the company outright and becoming exclusive US sales agent. The clearest exit path any UK medtech currently has.

**53. [Verdiva Bio](https://verdivabio.com/)** | London | Founded 2025 Clinical-stage cardiometabolic company developing next-generation obesity therapies including oral GLP-1 and weekly-dosed candidates. It launched in January 2025 with over $410m in Series A financing, among the largest Series A rounds Europe has seen. The lead investor is not confirmed in sources we could retrieve.

**54. [CellCentric](https://cellcentric.com/)** | Cambridge Clinical-stage biotech developing inobrodib, a first-in-class oral p300/CBP inhibitor for multiple myeloma. Its $220m Series D in May 2026 was led by Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners, funding Phase 2 and planned Phase 3 trials.

**55. [RQ Bio](https://www.rqbiotechnology.com/)** | UK Long-acting antibodies to prevent influenza in immunocompromised and high-risk people, led by programme RQB-01. Its $115m Series A in June 2026 had four lead investors: Frazier Life Sciences, EQT Life Sciences, Monograph and Forbion.

**56. [Cytospire Therapeutics](https://cytospire.com/)** | London Multispecific engager antibodies directing immune cells against cancer, with lead programme CYT-X300 entering clinical study for EGFR-positive solid tumours. Its £61m Series A in May 2026 was led by 4BIO Capital with £12m from the British Business Bank.

**57. [Beacon Therapeutics](https://beacontx.com/)** | London and Cambridge, Massachusetts | Founded 2023 Gene therapies for inherited retinal diseases causing blindness, with AGTC-501 in a registrational trial for X-linked retinitis pigmentosa. Its $75m Series C in January 2026 was led by Life Sciences at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, following a $170m Series B led by Forbion. Note it was founded by Syncona, a listed investor, and its rounds are disclosed through Syncona's regulatory news service.

**58. [Nuclera](https://nuclera.com/)** | Cambridge and Boston Benchtop eProtein Discovery systems giving researchers rapid access to functional proteins, now extended to antibody expression and binding validation. Co-founded by Dr Michael Chen. A $12m Series C extension in January 2026 took its Series C to $87m, led by Elevage Medical Technologies and Jonathan Milner.

**59. [Relation Therapeutics](https://relationrx.com/)** | London A lab-in-the-loop approach combining single-cell multi-omics, functional assays and machine learning to discover medicines, starting with osteoporosis. It took a further $26m in December 2025 from NVentures, DCVC and Magnetic Ventures, following a $35m seed extension in March 2024 that brought total seed funding to $60m.

**60. [STORM Therapeutics](https://stormtherapeutics.com/)** | Cambridge Small molecules targeting RNA-modifying enzymes, with oral METTL3 inhibitor STC-15 now dosing patients in a Phase 2 sarcoma trial. A Cambridge Gurdon Institute spinout. A $56m round was reported in April 2026 with no lead named, though sources conflict on both the size and the round letter, so the figure needs the company's own confirmation.

**61. [Quell Therapeutics](https://quell-tx.com/)** | London | Founded 2019 Engineered T regulatory cell therapies for transplantation and autoimmune disease, with QEL-001 aimed at preventing liver transplant rejection. A UCL spinout involving Professors Hans Stauss and Emma Morris. Its $156m Series B closed in November 2021, and AstraZeneca has since selected its first Treg therapy from a partnership reported as worth over $2bn in potential value.

**62. [Huma](https://huma.com/)** | London and New York A modular digital health platform supporting hospital-at-home care and decentralised clinical trials. Founded by Dan Vahdat. Its Series D of over $80m in July 2024 drew AstraZeneca, Hitachi Ventures and Leaps by Bayer, with no lead named, and it reports over $300m raised in total. An active acquirer, having bought Alcedis, eConsult and Aluna.

**63. [Numan](https://numan.com/)** | London | Founded 2018 Online health clinic and coaching platform, originally men's health and now weight management. Founded by Sokratis Papafloratos. It raised $57m in July 2025, $30m equity led by Big Pi Ventures plus $27m debt from HSBC Innovation Banking, taking totals to roughly $100m equity and $50m debt. Some outlets report the round as $60m, which does not reconcile with its stated components.

**64. [Cera](https://ceracare.co.uk/)** | UK AI-driven home healthcare, coordinating at-home care largely for elderly patients through a network of around 10,000 carers and nurses. Founded by Dr Ben Maruthappu. It raised $150m in early 2025 led by BDT & MSD Partners and Schroders Capital, though the financing was mostly debt and no source breaks out the equity portion.

**65. [Chemify](https://www.chemify.io/)** | Glasgow | Founded 2022 Chemputation: an AI design engine driving industrial-scale robotic synthesis of molecules. A University of Glasgow spinout founded by Professor Lee Cronin. Its Chemifarm facility opened in June 2025, a $50m-plus Series B followed in October 2025 co-led by Wing Venture Capital and Insight Partners, and £22m of grants arrived in September 2026 towards a second facility. Over £110m raised.

**66. [Arctoris](https://www.arctoris.com/)** | Abingdon | Founded 2016 Ulysses, a robotic wet lab running biology experiments end to end, with clients ordering through a web portal. Founded by Martin-Immanuel Bittner and Tom Fleming, now chief executive. Around £14m raised across four rounds plus grants. Its last confirmed round was a £3.2m seed in 2019, so it is overdue an update.

## Climate, energy and fusion

**67. [Octopus Energy](https://octopus.energy/)** | London | Founded 2015 An energy supplier with 14 million customer accounts across 8 million households, founded by Greg Jackson, and increasingly a software company. Its Kraken utility platform raised $1bn as a standalone entity in December 2025 at an $8.65bn valuation, led by D1 Capital Partners, ahead of a demerger targeted for mid-2026. The group was valued at around $9bn in January 2024.

**68. [Fuse Energy](https://www.fuseenergy.com/)** | London | Founded 2022 | around 350 staff A renewable energy supplier serving over 300,000 UK properties, which also owns solar and onshore wind and trades power in-house. Founded by Alan Chang, formerly Revolut's chief revenue officer, with Charles Orr. It raised a $70m Series B in December 2025 led by Balderton and Lowercarbon Capital, then a roughly $30m extension in June 2026 led by 20VC and Collaborative Fund. It said over the summer it would move into robotics. The $5bn valuation widely attached to the Series B deserves caution given the round size.

**69. [tem](https://tem.energy/)** | London | Founded 2021 | around 165 staff A platform supplying electricity to businesses by matching them with a pool of renewable generators. It raised a $75m Series B in February 2026, with Lightspeed, Hitachi Ventures, Voyager Ventures, Schroders Capital and Allianz named among the investors and no lead identified.

**70. [Tokamak Energy](https://tokamakenergy.com/)** | Milton Park, Oxfordshire | Founded 2009 | around 280 staff Spherical tokamak fusion power plants, plus high-temperature superconducting magnets sold separately through TE Magnetics. A UK Atomic Energy Authority spinout. Its $125m round in November 2024 was co-led by East X Ventures and Lingotto, taking total funding to $335m including $60m of UK and US government grants. Named magnet systems partner for the government's STEP programme in April 2026.

**71. [Newcleo](https://www.newcleo.com/)** | UK | Founded 2021 Lead-cooled fast reactors fuelled by reprocessed nuclear waste. Led by Stefano Buono. Its €75m round in February 2026 brought in industrial investors including Danieli, Cementir and MAIRE's NextChem, with no lead named, taking total funding past $755m since 2021. UK-incorporated but heavily Italy-centred in operations and investor base.

**72. [First Light Fusion](https://firstlightfusion.com/)** | Oxford | Founded 2011 | around 80 staff A University of Oxford spinout founded by Dr Nicholas Hawker and Professor Yiannis Ventikos. An important correction to how it is usually described: since March 2025 it no longer develops fusion power plants, having abandoned Machine 4 under new chief executive Mark Thomas. It now sells its pulsed-power amplifier technology to customers inside and outside fusion.

**73. [Zenobe](https://www.zenobe.com/)** | London | Founded 2017 Grid-scale battery storage, plus financing for electric bus and HGV fleets including charging infrastructure and second-life battery reuse. Co-founded by Steven Meersman and Nicholas Beatty. It announced £980m of private financing from 22 banking institutions in June 2026, which is debt. KKR and Infracapital became joint majority shareholders in 2023 through over £850m of equity, which puts it past the startup stage.

**74. [Nexeon](https://www.nexeonglobal.com/)** | Oxfordshire Silicon-carbon anode materials for lithium-ion batteries, raising energy density and charging speed. Its £100m round announced on 1 September 2026 included £52.6m of equity from the UK National Wealth Fund, alongside Korea Development Bank and Honda Xcelerator Ventures. A long-established company rather than a newcomer, having raised over £200m back in 2022.

**75. [Field](https://www.field.energy/)** | London Develops, owns and operates grid-scale battery storage across the UK and Western Europe, trading it through its own Gaia platform. Founded by Amit Gudka, co-founder of Bulb. It took a £42m project loan from Rabobank and ING in May 2025, on top of £200m from DIF Capital Partners in 2023.

**76. [Sunsave](https://www.sunsave.energy/)** | UK | Founded 2022 Rooftop solar and battery storage sold to households on subscription rather than upfront purchase. Founded by Alick Dru and Ben Graves. Its £113m announced in July 2025 was £13m of Series A equity co-led by Norrsken VC and IPGL, plus a £100m debt facility from Crédit Agricole. Worth stating plainly, because the headline figure is mostly debt.

**77. [Naked Energy](https://www.nakedenergy.com/)** | Crawley, West Sussex Virtu modular solar-thermal collectors producing hot water up to 120°C, plus hybrid heat-and-power units. Founded by Christophe Williams. Its £8.875m round in August 2026 was led by Great British Energy, with £7.5m through its Energy Engineered in the UK programme, taking its Series B to £27m. Installations include the British Library and the All England Lawn Tennis Club.

**78. [Mission Zero Technologies](https://www.missionzero.tech/)** | London Heat-free electrochemical direct air capture of CO2, sold to industrial CO2 users and carbon removal buyers. Its £21.8m Series A in March 2024 drew Breakthrough Energy Ventures, 2150, World Fund, Fortescue and Siemens Financial Services, with no lead named.

**79. [Levidian](https://www.levidian.com/)** | Cambridge | Founded 2012 Its LOOP technology splits methane into clean hydrogen and high-purity graphene without catalyst or water. Founded by Dr Krzysztof Koziol, now chief scientific officer. Over £35m of equity plus £4m of grants, with Baker Hughes and Mubadala among its backers, and a Deloitte UK Fast 50 win in 2025.

**80. [Carbon Clean](https://www.carbonclean.com/)** | London | Founded 2009 Point-source industrial carbon capture through its modular CycloneCC system and proprietary solvents, aimed at cement, steel and refining. Founded in India by Aniruddha Sharma and Prateek Bumb, now London-headquartered. Its $150m Series C in May 2022 was led by Chevron. Deployed at 50 sites with 2.8m tonnes captured cumulatively.

**81. [Certain Energy](https://www.certainenergy.com/)** | London Low-cost manganese flow batteries for long-duration grid storage, rebranded from RFC Power. It raised a £10m Series A in August 2026, with reporting disagreeing on both the lead investor and the currency.

## Quantum and deep tech

**82. [CuspAI](https://cusp.ai/)** | Cambridge | Founded 2024 | around 75 staff AI for discovering new materials, spanning design, simulation and experimental validation, with applications in semiconductors, batteries and clean energy. Founded by Chad Edwards and Max Welling. Its $450m Series B in July 2026 was co-led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA at a $2.6bn valuation, with Bezos Expeditions and the UK Sovereign AI Fund participating.

**83. [Quantum Motion](https://quantummotion.com/)** | London | Founded 2017 Silicon CMOS quantum computers built with standard semiconductor manufacturing. Founded by Professor John Morton of UCL and Professor Simon Benjamin of Oxford. Its $160m Series C in May 2026 was co-led by DCVC and Kembara, with the British Business Bank, Bosch Ventures and Porsche SE among the backers, following over £62m previously.

**84. [Universal Quantum](https://universalquantum.com/)** | Haywards Heath, Sussex | over 100 staff Large-scale trapped-ion quantum computers using a modular silicon microchip architecture. A University of Sussex spinout founded by Professor Winfried Hensinger and Dr Sebastian Weidt. Its Series A of over $100m in October 2026, co-led by DCVC and Firgun Ventures, took total funding past $125m.

**85. [Riverlane](https://riverlane.com/)** | Cambridge Quantum error correction hardware and software through its Deltaflow platform, which is the bottleneck problem for the whole field. Founded by Steve Brierley. Its $75m Series C in August 2024 was led by Planet First Partners, with an error correction team approaching 100 people.

**86. [Nu Quantum](https://nu-quantum.com/)** | Cambridge Quantum networking hardware, building the interconnects and orchestration needed to link quantum processors into larger systems. Founded by Dr Carmen Palacios-Berraquero. Its $60m Series A in December 2025 was described as the largest early-stage round by a UK quantum company, with no lead named.

**87. [Phasecraft](https://www.phasecraft.io/)** | London | Founded 2019 Quantum algorithms and software for materials and chemistry simulation on near-term hardware. Founded by Toby Cubitt, Ashley Montanaro and John Morton. Its $34m Series B in September 2025 was co-led by Plural, Playground Global and Novo Holdings' Quantum Fund, taking total funding past $50m including grants.

**88. [iGii](https://www.igii.uk/)** | Stirling, Scotland | around 55 staff Trading name of Integrated Graphene, manufacturing Gii, a patented 3D carbon foam with graphene-like properties, and electrodes for point-of-care diagnostics and energy storage. It announced £22.7m in September 2026, made up of an £11.7m Series B led by the Scottish National Investment Bank and £11m from Scottish Enterprise.

## Space and defence

Defence was the fourth-largest UK sector by money raised in the third quarter of 2026, taking £375m from only four rounds.

**89. [Cambridge Aerospace](https://cambridgeaerospace.com/)** | Cambridge | Founded 2024 | around 75 staff Air defence: the Skyhammer drone interceptor, Starhammer missile interceptor and Looking Glass radar, with UK Ministry of Defence contracts. Led by Steven Barrett, formerly of MIT and now at Cambridge. Its $300m Series C in August 2026 was led by DFJ Growth at a $3.4bn valuation, up from $1.3bn at a $200m Series B just four months earlier. The fastest valuation climb on this list.

**90. [Open Cosmos](https://open-cosmos.com/)** | Harwell, Oxfordshire | close to 400 staff Builds and operates small satellites and constellations, selling end-to-end missions and Earth observation data. Founded by Rafel Jorda Siquier. It raised €300m in September 2026, reported as $346m elsewhere, led by European investors with ETF Partners, Lightrock, BCI and Entrepreneurs First participating and no single lead named. Four factories across Europe.

**91. [Kraken Technology Group](https://krakentechnology.com/)** | UK Uncrewed surface vessels and their payload systems for maritime defence, founded and led by Mal Crease. Its $175m Series B in July 2026 was led by Digital Transformation Capital Partners at a $1bn valuation, with Rheinmetall backing the round and acting as a German manufacturing partner, alongside the NATO Innovation Fund and the British Business Bank. Rheinmetall is a participant, not the lead.

**92. [Space Forge](https://www.spaceforge.com/)** | Cardiff Returnable satellites that manufacture semiconductor materials in microgravity. Co-founded by Joshua Western. Its £22.6m Series A in May 2025 was led by the NATO Innovation Fund, followed by £10m from the European Space Agency in June 2026 through its General Support Technology Programme. The largest Welsh space company by funding.

## Consumer, commerce and business software

**93. [PerfectTed](https://perfectted.com/)** | London | Founded 2021 | around 90 staff Matcha-based energy drinks and powdered matcha, reportedly on track to pass $100m in revenue this year. Sales, operations and business development dominate its headcount, which tells you it is a distribution business rather than an engineering one.

**94. [SURI](https://trysuri.com/)** | London | Founded 2022 | around 50 staff Sustainable personal care, built around an electric toothbrush made from plant-based and recyclable materials, repairable rather than disposable. It recently launched a cheaper version.

**95. [Swap](https://swap-commerce.com/)** | London | Founded 2023 | around 200 staff A single platform for e-commerce operations: cross-border shipping, order tracking, returns, tax and inventory forecasting. Founded by Sam Atkinson. Its $100m Series C in January 2026 was co-led by Iconiq and DST Global, taking total funding to $149m. Its agentic Storefront product lets shoppers browse, ask questions and buy in one interface.

**96. [Dwelly](https://www.dwelly.group/)** | London | Founded 2023 | around 400 staff Buys independent letting agencies and runs them on its own AI platform, handling maintenance, payments and tenant communications. Founded by Ilia Drozdov, Dan Lifshits and Dmitry Khanukov. Its Series B in July 2026 was £128m, co-led by EQT Growth and General Catalyst, though the structure matters: £71.5m equity plus a £56.4m debt facility. Six acquisitions in 2026 and more than 15,000 properties under management.

**97. [Sona](https://sona.ai/)** | London | Founded 2021 | around 120 staff An AI workforce management platform for frontline teams, covering demand forecasting, scheduling and staffing prediction. Customers include Popeyes. It raised a $45m Series B in April 2026 led by N47, taking total funding past $100m.

**98. [Omnea](https://omnea.co/)** | London | Founded 2022 | around 190 staff AI procurement orchestration: a single entry point for purchase requests, with workflow routing and a central supplier record. Customers include Spotify. Founded by Ben Freeman. Its $50m Series B was co-led by Insight Partners and Khosla Ventures in September 2025, taking total funding past $75m.

**99. [Conduct](https://conduct.ai/)** | London and New York | Founded 2024 | around 45 staff AI software that maps how a company's complex internal systems actually work and then helps change them. It announced a $60m Series A over the summer.

**100. [trumpet](https://sendtrumpet.com/)** | London | Founded 2021 | around 30 staff A shared digital workspace for sales teams and their prospects, holding proposals, materials and timelines in one place. It recently launched a Copilot feature letting revenue teams work in natural language.

## Companies you might expect here, and why they are not

A list like this is only honest if it says who it excluded.

**Acquired during the period.** Faculty, the London enterprise AI firm founded by Marc Warner, Angie Ma and Andy Brookes, agreed a sale to Accenture in January 2026 reported at over $1bn, with around 400 staff moving across. Huel is being bought by Danone in a deal valuing it at €1bn, cleared by the Competition and Markets Authority in August 2026. Wild, the refillable deodorant brand, went to Unilever in April 2025. GoCardless was bought by Dutch group Mollie, completing by September 2026. Congenica, the Sanger Institute genomics spinout, went to France's SeqOne in September 2025. Myricx Bio, the antibody-drug conjugate developer founded by Ed Tate, Roberto Solari and Andrew Bell, was bought by Novartis for up to $1.5bn in July 2026.

**Now public.** Quantinuum closed an upsized Nasdaq listing on 5 June 2026 at $60 a share, raising $1.68bn gross. It is also Colorado-headquartered, with its UK presence coming from the Cambridge Quantum Computing merger, so it fails on two counts.

**Licensed banks and corporate subsidiaries.** Monzo, Starling, OakNorth and Allica all hold banking licences, which is why they appear above with that stated rather than as scrappy challengers. Ebury, the cross-border payments business, is 55% owned by Santander and planning a London listing at around £2bn. Isomorphic Labs is an Alphabet subsidiary.

**Ceased trading.** Rovco and Vaarst, the Bristol subsea robotics businesses founded by Brian Allen, merged into Beam in 2024 and stopped operating in May 2025, making more than 100 staff redundant. Rovco Limited is in liquidation and Vaarst Limited was dissolved in May 2026.

**In difficulty.** Robin AI, the London contract-AI company, sought a rescue buyer in October 2025 after a $50m round failed to close, listing itself on an insolvency marketplace with around 200 jobs at risk against reported losses of £12m on roughly £8m of revenue. Scissero acquired its managed legal services arm in December 2025. Wootzano, the County Durham robotic produce-packing company, entered liquidation in November 2025 and trades now only under an Edinburgh court sist.

**Left out on location.** Volta, the AI compute business that raised $300m in August 2026 at a $2.4bn valuation with NVIDIA participating, appears in UK round tables but lists Palo Alto first among its three offices and names no headquarters. TEKEVER is Portuguese. UFORCE is Ukrainian. Saga Robotics is Norwegian with a substantial Lincoln arm.

## What the hundred actually tell you

Four patterns run through this list, and none of them is the headline number.

The first is that UK venture funding has become a barbell. A handful of companies raise nine and ten-figure rounds while the long tail raises grants and pre-seed cheques under £1m. The median seed round in the third quarter of 2026 was £4.1m and the median pre-seed £1.1m, while ten rounds took 55% of the quarter's money.

The second is that the squeeze is in the middle. Pre-seed and seed round counts held up year on year, but labelled Series A rounds fell by more than a third. If you are raising seed now, budget runway for a longer gap before Series A than the companies above had.

The third is that the state has become a venture investor. The UK Sovereign AI Fund, the National Wealth Fund, British Patient Capital, the British Business Bank, Great British Energy, the Scottish National Investment Bank and the NATO Innovation Fund appear across this list, often in the largest rounds. For founders in AI, defence, energy and deep tech, the public investor map now matters as much as the private one, and our rundown of [the most active UK startup investors in 2026](https://bizztor.com/insights/most-active-uk-startup-investors-2026/) is a place to start.

The fourth is that the exits are strategic. Stryker's option over CMR Surgical, Accenture buying Faculty, Novartis buying Myricx, Danone buying Huel, Unilever buying Wild, Bosch manufacturing for Humanoid, Rockwell investing in Slamcore, Arm in Olix. Industrial and corporate buyers, not public markets, are where UK companies are landing. Nscale's pre-IPO financing and Quantinuum's Nasdaq listing are the exceptions that make the rule visible.

One last thing. Read any top-100 as a snapshot of where capital and attention sat in late 2026, not a prediction. Several companies on this list will be acquired within a year, and at least one will not survive it. The section above on who did not make it is there because the same was true of last year's lists.

_Building something that belongs on this list, or think we have missed an obvious name? Tell Bizztor about it._

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Source: https://bizztor.com/guides/top-100-uk-startups/