UK companies training large, general-purpose AI models.
Early-stageLondon
Develops foundation models for energy operations, combining physics-based modelling with machine learning to help operators run complex industrial facilities more efficiently. Its platform is called Orbital. Founded by Imperial College alumni and headquartered in London, with offices in Houston and Bengaluru.
GrowthLondon
Builds a very large biological database by sampling genetic diversity from nature, then uses it to train generative foundation models for biology and drug discovery. Headquartered in London, with a laboratory in Boston.
GrowthCambridge
Builds AI models that discover and design new materials, starting with compounds that capture carbon. Headquartered in Cambridge and founded in 2024 by researchers with roots in Google DeepMind and academia.
Early-stageLondon
Builds in-memory-compute AI inference chips designed to speed up large-language-model inference and cut its cost. Headquartered in London.
Early-stageLondon
Builds decentralised infrastructure for training, verifying, and coordinating machine learning across distributed compute. Headquartered in London.
AcquiredLondon
Runs one of the world's leading AI research labs, behind breakthroughs including AlphaFold, AlphaGo, and the Gemini family of models. Headquartered in London and part of Google, it anchors much of the UK's AI research base.
AcquiredBristol
Designs AI accelerator processors, its Intelligence Processing Units, and the systems and software that run machine-learning workloads on them. Headquartered in Bristol.
SeedLondon
Builds reinforcement-learning systems designed to discover new knowledge and skills without relying on human-generated data. Founded in 2025 by David Silver, the former head of reinforcement learning at Google DeepMind and a lead researcher behind AlphaGo and AlphaZero. Headquartered in London.
GrowthLondon
Applies AI to drug discovery, using models descended from AlphaFold to predict how molecules behave and design new medicines. Headquartered in London as an Alphabet company spun out of DeepMind.
SeedLondon
Uses generative AI to design proteins from scratch, aiming to make biology programmable and speed up the discovery of new therapeutics such as antibodies and enzymes. Founded in 2023 by Simon Kohl, a former co-lead of DeepMind's protein-design team and a scientist on AlphaFold2. Headquartered in London.
Early-stageLondon
Designs new materials using a "foundation model for atoms", targeting applications such as carbon capture, cleaner fuels, and cooling for AI data centres. Founded in 2022 by Jonathan Godwin, previously part of DeepMind's materials research. Headquartered in London.
GrowthLondon
Develops open generative-AI models spanning image, video, audio and 3D, best known for the Stable Diffusion family of image models. Headquartered in London.
GrowthLondon
Builds self-driving software that learns to drive end-to-end from cameras, without the HD maps or lidar most rivals rely on. Headquartered in London and licensing its system to carmakers.
SeedLondon
A London AI lab building "world models for extreme physics": machine-learning systems meant to replace slow engineering simulation, exploring vast design spaces far faster than conventional methods and learning from real experiments. Targets fusion reactors, rockets and semiconductor fabrication. Headquartered in London.
Zenithon, a London AI lab, has raised a $10M seed to build "world models for extreme physics" — machine-learning systems meant to replace the slow engineering simulation behind fusion reactors, rockets and semiconductor fabs, exploring vast design spaces far faster and learning from real experiments. A notably deep-tech cap table for a seed.
Basecamp Research, a London company building AI models of biology from the largest genomic dataset it can gather from nature, has raised an oversubscribed $140M Series C. It was led by S32, but the striking part is the supporting cast: Nvidia, Anthropic's venture fund, and the UK government's Sovereign AI fund all put money in.
Emulate, a London startup barely a month old and founded by former DeepMind researchers behind the Genie world models, is reportedly in advanced talks to raise around $700M at a $3.7B valuation, with Index Ventures and Lightspeed poised to lead. It would be the third UK "neo-lab" to spin out of DeepMind this year at a ten-figure valuation.
A month after winning the licences, Wayve and Uber have actually put robotaxis on London's streets — Wayve's first commercial public service anywhere in the world. It is a small, safety-driver-supervised fleet for now, and it arrives just as Waymo lines up its own London launch.
Demis Hassabis is moving from chief executive of Google DeepMind to its chair, also becoming Alphabet's chief scientist, while Koray Kavukcuoglu takes over running the lab day-to-day. For the UK's most important AI research institution, the change is reassuring in one direction and worth watching in another.
The UK's £500M Sovereign AI programme has now invested in, or is closing deals with, 12 UK AI companies that between them have raised £4B. Its latest update also signals a shift: it plans to launch government procurement challenges and buy from startups, not just invest in them.