These are the pioneering AI startups that raised the most money this year

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the fast-growing fields for new business. Even more excitingly, the UK has become the premier location for innovative AI startups.

New data from HSBC Innovation Banking and Dealroom shows that Britain has become a hotbed for AI talent. In the first half of this year, machine learning startups accounted for 22% of all UK tech investment, up from 12% in 2019.

Last year, Startups reported that average funding for homegrown AI startups grew by 66% between 2021 and 2023, according to data from the Startups 100 Index.

HSBC estimates that AI firms in Britain will raise a record-breaking estimated £3.4bn by the end of the year. The below tracker* will record the biggest investment rounds raised by AI startups in 2024, to see if the UK can meet (and maybe even surpass) that target.

*This article will be updated monthly to include all the latest AI funding news for UK startups.

August

• Userled – £4m

Userled will be the latest venture from experienced entrepreneurs, Yann Sarfati and Tristan Saunders, who have together built up eons of experience in tech powerhouses such as Salesforce and American Express. The startup aims to offer B2B audiences the tools they need to create “hyper-personalised” marketing campaigns. In August, it announced it had secured £4m in pre-seed funding.

Unlike other social media AI tools, Userled employs a unique Cookieless Fingerprinting and Identity Layer to understand customer behavior while prioritising data privacy. This innovative approach empowers marketers to create tailored campaigns without having to rely on traditional cookies.

• Gradient Labs – £2.8m

Started by ex-Monzo staff in 2023, Gradient Labs is a building an AI knowledge base that can be put to use as a powerful customer service agent for small businesses. The company claims to go further than RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation); a popular approach for creating AI agents, but one that can only answer simple questions.

Just one year in, the London-based business is still in its early stages. But in August, it confirmed it has secured £2.8M in a seed round of funding, and says it plans to use the cash injection to advance its AI-driven solutions and build an agent that can offer more accurate and informative responses for SMEs.

July

• Fractile – £11.2m

AI chip startup Fractile emerged from stealth mode at the end of July with an announcement it had raised $15m (around £11.7m) in seed funding. The startup was founded in 2022 by CEO Walter Goodwin, who holds an Oxford PhD in AI and robotics, to manufacture world-leading chips that can be used in new AI products.

Commenting on the new investment, Goodwin said: “This is more than just a speed-up – changing the performance point for inference allows us to explore completely new ways to use today’s leading AI models to solve the world’s most complex problems.” Fractile will be hoping to topple Nvidia, a US-based chip manufacturer that currently dominates the market.

• Xapien – £8m

Xapien is a London-based AI company specialising in due diligence, a growing concern for today’s business owners operating in a global market. At the end of July, it secured a substantial £8 million investment in a Series A funding round led by YFM Equity Partners. The new money brings its total investment to £14 million.

Leveraging advanced AI and natural language processing, Xapien offers rapid, in-depth background checks, enabling businesses to assess potential partners and mitigate risks efficiently. James Savage, Partner at YFM, says Xapien “is poised to expand into new areas, enhancing its product, growing its team, and extending its geographical reach”.

• Hey Savi – £2.2m

Ever seen a photo of someone wearing a great top on the internet and wondered where they bought it from? London-based Hey Savi’s AI-powered app allows consumers to find an item they love, in a size that fits, in just one snap, for a highly personalised solution for shoppers.

Hey Savi secured £2.2m in funding in mid-July, making it only the second ever entirely female-founded UK tech company to raise over £2m at pre-seed. It’s still in the MVP stage, but Series A funding could be the next outfit that Hey Savi tries on.

Victoria Peppiatt, Co-founder and Co-CEO, commented on the funding: “The response to our raise has been phenomenal. The huge support we’ve received from high profile investors has both validated the potential of our product and reaffirmed the market opportunity. We are incredibly proud of the fact that 54% of our investors are female.”

June

• Stability AI – £61m

Generative AI startup, Stability AI has had an (ironically) unstable path to power. Having received a $1bn valuation in 2022, it has since struggled with leadership changes and fundraising rounds, apparently due to the lack of a business model.

Thankfully, after the high-profile exit of its founder and CEO Ema Mostaque earlier this year, Stability has raised new funds and appointed a new top boss. Its 200 employees will be hoping that the $80m (£61m) cash injection can get the firm back on track in 2024.

• CuspAI – £27m

Like many AI startups, CuspAI is an incredibly complicated business idea. Put simply, it uses generative AI to design completely new materials, by asking a computer to give it specific properties. It’s a mad, futuristic concept that has so far won $30m (£27m) in seed funding.

According to TechCrunch, co-founder and CEO (as well as world-leading chemist) Chad Edwards says: “we think we’re entering the ‘materials-on-demand’ era”.

• Wordsmith – £3.86m

TechCrunch gave a rather pointed description this June when it wrote that legal tech startup, Wordsmith had “somehow” managed to attract the attention of two venture capitalists. The brand raised $5m (£3.86m) with its AI platform for in-house legal teams and law firms.

Still, that a small Scottish startup has gained such attention is surprising. Investors include the former CEO of tech unicorn Skyscanner. TrustPilot is already a customer. Wordsmith is proof that UK AI tech startups don’t need to be based near Old Street to be successful.

May

• Wayve – £800m

May saw the unveiling of the UK’s largest AI investment to date. Wayve, a self-driving car startup, secured a record-breaking investment worth $1.05bn (£800m), as part of a funding round led by Japan’s SoftBank.

Founded by New Zealand-native, Alex Kendall, Wayve uses embodied AI to teach its computers to drive in the same way that humans take driving lessons.

The investment means the brand has instantly been catapulted to unicorn status while Kendall has become a recognisable face on the AI market. The then-Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak said the deal “anchors the UK’s position as an AI superpower”.

• PolyAI – £38.5m

Barely a week after Wayve announced its funding news, PolyAI announced it had raised $50m (£38.5m) to power its AI voice assistant technology for call centres.

The London-based startup was founded as a spinout from the University of Cambridge. It appeared in the Startups 100 top ten back in 2023.

The Series C funding round has resulted in the startups securing a £500m valuation, making it one of the most successful AI businesses in the UK today.

April

• Jigsaw – £12m

One of the biggest startup success stories from 2023 came from Mistral AI, a French generative AI tool that Microsoft valued at €2 billion and one of the fastest growing startups globally. Now the backers behind Mistral have invested in another startup: Jigsaw.

Founded in 2019, Jigsaw generates all the materials required for complex business deals. For example, corporate structure charts, organisational charts, data flows and more. Based in London, it raised £12m in early April and has already begun expanding into the US.

• Lawhive – £9.5m

Describing itself as “Shopify for Law”, Lawhive has built an LLM-powered “AI lawyer” which is designed to allow SMEs to access high-quality legal support without the need to hire an entire legal team.

In mid-April, the startup raised £9.5m in a funding round led by investment firm GV. It also previously secured £1.5m in a funding round held two years prior.

• Qureight – £6.8m

Qureight is a rapid detection tool that uses AI to crunch vast healthcare datasets to help clinicians diagnose health problems faster, and more accurately. After previously raising £1.5m in a funding round in February 2022, it secured a further £6.8m in mid-April.

“Use of AI to accelerate drug discovery is one of the hottest opportunities in VC right now,” said Guinness Ventures investment officer, Dr Malcom King, who participated in the round.

March

• Haiper – £10.6m

Founded in late 2021 by two Oxford PhD students, Haiper’s no-code video generation software enables anyone, regardless of tech prowess or graphic design experience, to easily generate high-quality video content by inputting just a few lines of instructions.

Haiper emerged from ‘stealth mode’ (where a startup attempts to stay hush as long as possible to avoid attracting unwanted market attention) back in March and it will never be able to go back, after raising a very loud $13.8m (£10.6m) in a seed round.

• Oriole Networks – £10m

Oriole launched in 2023, but it has already passed a significant milestone by raising £10m in seed funding. The startup, which seeks to boost AI system performance by harnessing the power of light (we’re lost already), raised the money with support from Innovate UK.

Speed is everything at Oriole. With its novel approach, Large Language Models can be trained up to a hundred times faster while using much less energy than rival software. Plus, the founders estimate the technology will be available to B2B customers in just a few years.

February

• Baseimmune – £9m

Baseimmune, a biotech company that uses deep learning to generate new vaccines, was founded in 2019 by three University of Oxford PhD students. With the COVID-19 pandemic beginning just after launch, their mission statement has since resonated with investors.

The startup secured £9m in a Series A funding round in February, led by new investors MSD Global Health Innovation Fund and IQ Capital. CEO and co-founder, Joshua Blight said the cash will help to “expedite the delivery of impactful vaccines against future viruses.”

• Lilli – £8.2m

Lilli is a remote monitoring tool for people who need social care. Using smart home sensors to track everything from the temperature a radiator is set at, to the number of times a toilet is flushed, to flag potential problems before the user can notice them.

The company, based in Woking, UK, announced it had raised £8.2m in Series A funding back in February. CEO Gren Paull said he is excited about the potential Lilli has to help users maintain their independence at home for as long as possible.

• Mondra – £3.6m

Founded by Jason Barrett in 2020, Mondra’s platform enables food businesses to record, share and monitor environmental data using clever automation tools, allowing the measurement and management of Scope 3 carbon emissions.

As food retailers, including big supermarkets, seek to reach Net Zero, Mondra will likely find its way onto more IT systems. That’s why the startup raised £3.6m at the end of February, and has already won partnerships with brands including Sainsbury’s and Starbucks.

January

• ElevenLabs – £61m

Mati Staniszewski was just 27-years-old when he founded ElevenLabs in 2022. The London-based AI startup that employs AI to generate voices used for video dubbing.

Two years later, the company has now taken on unicorn status after it secured $80m (£61m) in a Series B funding round led by a US-based venture capital firm.

Wary of being part of the AI bubble, Staniszewski, a former Palantir employee, told the Evening Standard that the money will be used for R&D to surpass rivals. “We realise the next few years are critical to stay at the forefront of technology”, he said.

• Recraft – £9.2m

Founded in 2022, Recraft, a London-based generative AI startup, raised €11m (£9.2m) in Series A funding in a round led by Khosla Ventures. The company is unique in being one of the few female-led generative AI platforms, and amassed over 300,000 users in its first year.

In a supportive move for the startup community, Recraft also released the pitch deck that won it funding from well-known business leaders including HubSpot co-founder, Dharmesh Shah. Budding entrepreneurs can also read our guide on how to design a pitch deck for tips.

• OpenDialog – £6.1m

Conversational AI is nothing new. Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini Advanced are now used by thousands of businesses everyday. But OpenDialog, a no-code platform, is specifically designed for regulated industries such as insurance and healthcare.

Businesses can then build AI-powered chatbots and digital assistants using OpenDialog, tailored to meet unique industry laws. As a novel tool answering one of the key challenges for regulated sectors, OpenDialog raised $8m (£6.1m) in Series A funding this January.

• Wondercraft – £2.36m

Any startup that receives funding from Dragon’s Den favourite, Steven Bartlett grabs headlines, and Wondercraft was no different. In mid-January, the audio editing startup announced it had raised $3m (£2.36m) in an investment round led by Will Ventures.

Having only launched as a Beta in 2023, the company has already amassed 30,000 users. “I believe [the Wondercraft] product is the future of audio production for creators and publishers so I couldn’t be more excited to be on board”, Bartlett said in a press release.