Globally, the UK ranks third in terms of the number of AI companies and private capital investment in AI. It accounts for around half of all AI private capital investment in Europe. Every year, hundreds of new AI companies are established in the kingdom, which further contributes to the growth of the industry.
The AI sector employs over 50,000 people and contributes more than £3.7B to the UK economy annually. Projections suggest that by 2035, the UK’s AI market’s contribution could rise to over £550B.
The UK also hosted the world’s first AI Safety Summit last year. It brought together industry experts, academia, and civil society from the EU and 28 leading AI nations to agree on the Bletchley Declaration–a commitment to mitigate the risks associated with advanced AI.
One subset of AI currently making waves is the generative AI. Using machine-learning algorithms to create new content, it does tasks such as content creation, artwork production, code debugging, and many more. Models are trained on various datasets to generate authentic text, images, videos, and audio, which makes them useful across different industries.
London is home to some leading generative AI companies in the UK. Let’s shine the spotlight on them.
TOffeeAM
Founder(s): Francesco Montomoli, Marco Pietropaoli, Audrey Gaymann
Founded: 2019
Funding: £6M (€7.51)
Hiring: No
Generative design software company TOffeeAM was founded in 2019 by Francesco Montomoli, Marco Pietropaoli and Audrey Gaymann. It was a spinout of a four-year 3D printing topology research project at Imperial College London.
TOffeeAM develops its software for engineering applications, with its goal being to “make engineers go further and faster.”
The company started gaining recognition after winning the 2020 Formnext Start-up Challenge. It secured $1M (€0.92M) in seed funding led by IQ Capital, with support from the Royal Academy of Engineering and Imperial College London’s Accelerate program.
TOffeeAM is currently working on a project titled “Multiscale Optimization Framework for the Next Generation of Heat Exchangers” to enhance thermal efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions. The project is done in collaboration with Imperial College London and the National Aerospace Technology Exploitation Programme (NATEP).
Synthesia
Founder(s): Lourdes Agapito, Matthias Niessner, Victor Riparbelli, Steffen Tjerrild
Founded: 2017
Funding: $156.6M (€143.9M)
Hiring: Yes, check out job opportunities here
Video generation AI company Synthesia was founded in 2017 by Lourdes Agapito, Matthias Niessner, Victor Riparbelli, and Steffen Tjerrild. It specialises in AI generation for training, advertising, and marketing purposes.
The company’s technology was shown on BBC’s Click, where it generated a video of Matthew Amroliwala speaking multiple languages. Its voice database supports multiple gender options in over sixty languages.
Now, Synthesia’s software is used by corporations such as Amazon, Tiffany & Co., and IHG Hotels & Resorts.
The company has raised $90M (€82.5M) in a Series C round, bringing its total funding to $156.6M (€143.9M). The funding also delivered Synthesia to unicorn status with a valuation of $1B (€919M).
Now, Synthesia focuses on refining its deep learning system to deliver even more realistic AI-generated videos.
PhysicsX
Founder(s): Robin Tuluie, Jacomo Corbo
Founded: 2019
Funding: $39.5M (€36.3M)
Hiring: Yes, check out job opportunities here
PhysicsX, founded by Robin Tuluie and Jacomo Corbo, uses generative AI to address engineering challenges.
It combines numerical physics, computer-aided engineering (CAE), and machine learning to develop solutions which can accelerate engineering processes. The solution can be applied across industries such as automotive, aerospace, EV, renewables, and more.
The company currently employs over 50 engineers, data scientists, and machine learning experts. The diverse team’s backgrounds include numerical physics, computer-aided engineering, and machine learning.
PhysicsX recently raised $32M (€29.4M) in a Series A round led by General Catalyst. The round also saw participation from investors such as Standard Investments and Henry Kravis. The funding will help advance its AI models and fund more research.
PolyAI
Founder(s): Nikola Mrkšić, Tsung-Hsien Wen, Pei-Hao Su
Founded: 2017
Funding: $120M (€110.3M)
Hiring: Yes, check out job opportunities here
PolyAI was founded in 2017 by Nikola Mrkšić, Tsung-Hsien Wen, and Pei-Hao Su, all of whom have extensive backgrounds in academia and industry giants like Apple, Google, and Facebook. The team focuses on developing conversational AI systems for customer service.
PolyAI employs generative and retrieval AI models to handle customer interactions through its voice platform. Businesses can automate customer service tasks and provide immediate responses to inquiries. The voice assistants can manage complex conversations, such as troubleshooting technical issues or providing product information.
The company has successfully raised $50M (€45.9M) in a Series C round. The round was backed by investors such as Hedosophia, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), and Zendesk. With its, PolyAI’S total funding has reached over $120M (€110.3M).
Move AI
Founder(s): Anthony Ganjou, Tino Millar
Founded: 2019
Funding: $10M (€9.1M)
Hiring: Yes, check out job opportunities here
Move AI, founded by Anthony Ganjou and Tino Millar, develops a platform to create 3D animations from human movement. It uses advanced AI and computer vision technology to do so.
Move AI’s proprietary algorithms convert 2D video footage into detailed 3D motion data. With it, animators do not need traditional motion capture suits and expensive equipment. This innovation makes realistic 3D animation more accessible and cost-effective for film, gaming, and virtual reality creators.
Its latest technology even allows users to capture human motion with just a smartphone. The move is aimed at lowering the barrier to high-quality animation production.
The company raised $10M (€9.1M) in seed funding. It saw participation from investors like Play Ventures, Warner Music Group, RKKVC, Level2 Ventures, and Animoca Brands. With this funding, Move AI wants to expand its team with top talents in engineering, research, marketing, and sales.
Genei
Founder(s): Adrien Wald, Billy B. Richards, Jack Bowen, Lakhs Aithani
Founded: 2019
Funding: $130,000 (€119,524)
Hiring: No
Genei is a company focusing on document summarization using natural language processing (NLP) models. The platform is designed to assist users in quickly and efficiently summarising large volumes of text. Its products are geared towards students, researchers, writers, and content creators.
Genei uses state-of-the-art natural language processing models that perform entity annotation, semantic search, and question-answering. The advantage of such models is that they can consider the context of each word within a document about other words.
The information processing at Genei allows for better note-taking and improved productivity.
Genei closed its last funding round in September 2021 from a pre-seed round. Its investors include Goodwater Capital and Gerald Parloiu.
Flawless AI
Founder(s): Nick Lynes, Scott Mann
Founded: 2022
Funding: $2.2M (€2M)
Hiring: Yes, check out job opportunities here
Founded in 2022, Flawless AI offers an operations observability and incident management platform. It targets businesses with complex, high-volume operations.
Its AI-powered platform analyses operational data, such as sales, logistics, and supply chain information. In doing so, it aims to improve operational efficiency and incident response times.
According to clients, Flawless AI has increased its operational capabilities. Some businesses reported a 20 per cent increase in capacity and a decrease in incident response times from hours to minutes.
Flawless AI recently raised $2.2M (€2M) in seed funding, which was led by 42CAP. The round also saw participation from Picus Capital, Dreamcraft Ventures, and Oktogon Ventures. This investment, which came from investors with experience building B2B SaaS businesses, will support its product development and global expansion.
Stability AI
Founder(s): Emad Mostaque
Founded: 2020
Funding: $126M (€115M)
Hiring: Yes, check out job opportunities here
Stability AI, founded by Emad Mostaque, is known for its community-driven, open-source AI projects. It is the company behind the popular text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion. Since its launch, the software has been downloaded and licensed by over 200,000 developers worldwide.
The company also offers DreamStudio, a product that has grown to over a million registered users from more than 50 countries. It has collectively created over 170 million images.
Stability AI secured $101M (€92.8M) in a 2022 funding round led by Coatue, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and O’Shaughnessy Ventures LLC.
This funding will accelerate the development of open AI models for various applications. This includes generating images, language, audio, video, and 3D, for both consumer and enterprise use cases.
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