UK AI scale-ups hit record £8.3bn funding in 2025

Barclays Eagle Labs released The Ones to Watch: AI 100 Report profiling the UK’s top 100 AI scale-ups and reporting that investment into the sector reached a record £8.3 billion in 2025.

The report says the UK AI ecosystem ended 2025 in its strongest position to date, with established companies closing record deals and a large pipeline of first-time fundraisers.

Researchers identified 59 software-as-a-service companies among the 100 scale-ups. Activity in data provision and analysis combined is roughly three times the size of the next-largest area, robotics and automation.

London remains the main hub for AI fintech, hosting 74.1% of the UK’s AI fintech companies. The report also documents faster relative growth in several regions: the number of active AI companies in the North West has increased 2.41 times since 2019, compared with London’s 2.13 times; Scotland’s base has grown 1.81 times. The Midlands is expanding AI activity that builds on its automotive and engineering strengths.

The report includes practical advice for founders. Tom Watts and Asif Ahmed of accountancy firm Cooper Parry recommend planning for the enterprise sales cycle early, monitoring international markets from the start, and aligning product and go-to-market plans with the UK’s strengths.

Mike Jones, founder of talent firm Emerald, recommends prioritizing early hires, keeping talent density high and setting company culture deliberately from day one.

Preetham Peddanagari, partner and UK & Ireland chief technology officer at EY, said founders should “build for pain, not for applause,” and added that successful AI firms solve expensive, repetitive problems inside real workflows and design for trust from the outset.

Abdul Qureshi, head of Barclays Business Banking, described the challenge as helping the strongest businesses convert innovation into long-term, scalable growth. Mark Zanoli, Barclays’ global chairman of investment banking, described the companies on the list as “building what comes next, and capital is following for rational reasons.”

Barclays Eagle Labs also announced the Scale up Consortium to connect founders with industry leaders and support high-growth UK companies as they scale.

The report notes the AI companies cover a range of sectors, with professional and business services prominent in regions such as the North West and Scotland. It recommends founders consider international markets earlier in their development.

Barclays Eagle Labs frames the AI 100 as an evidence-based view of where commercial value is forming in the UK’s AI sector and as a resource for founders aiming to move from startup stage to global scale-up.