In the “Startup-up, Scale-up” review report published last year, chancellor Rachel Reeves promised to make Britain the “high growth, start-up hub of the world”. Now, almost six months into the new government, entrepreneurs remain encouraged by the promises made in the Labour manifesto. “The ambition embodied in Great British Energy and the 2030 decarbonization targets is precisely what we need and deserve,” says Shilpika Gautam, CEO of greentech startup Opna, about Labour’s energy policies. “It’s high time the UK caught up with the policy and financing innovations in other countries, such as the Inflation Reduction Act in the US.”
Amit Gudka, founder of Field, agrees: “We welcome Labour’s plans to double onshore wind, triple solar and quadruple offshore wind by 2030. These plans are ambitious, but not unrealistic, provided the Government continues to make clear policy decisions and create a stable policy and regulatory environment.” Other sectors, such as healthcare, share the same cautious optimism. “Labour do have a greater political mandate to genuinely reform the NHS, and Wes Streeting in particular seems pragmatic,” Meri Beckwith, co-founder of Lindus Health, says. “He’s signaled a greater willingness to work with private companies to address some of the really big challenges facing the NHS.”
Expectations are, of course, tempered by the reality left behind by 14 years of Conservative government. For instance, in June, the UK government already had to shelve a £1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) commitment for tech and AI projects made by the previous government because no money had ever been allocated for it. “We should hope that UK industry and academia will find other avenues to mobilize the resources to build that infrastructure,” says Robin Tuluie, founder and CSEO of PhysicsX. “We don’t envy the very hard fiscal choices that the chancellor and the Labour government have to make.”
Robin AI
Robin AI is building an AI legal assistant that can help anyone to solve their legal problems. “I wanted to make law more accessible,” says Richard Robinson, a former corporate lawyer at Boies Schiller Flexner, and CEO of Robin AI. “We’re not here to pad out the billable hours business model of big law firms. We’re legal AI for business, not just AI for law firms.” Co-founded in 2019 by Robinson and machine learning researcher James Clough, Robin’s legal assistant is already used by hundreds of businesses like PepsiCo, PwC and Yum! Brands. Its latest product, Robin AI Reports, can, according to Robinson, analyze hundreds of legal contracts and generate single reports in minutes, allowing companies to complete legal processes that used to take weeks—for instance, M&A Due Diligence—in a matter of hours. The company has raised $26 million (£19.8 million) by Singapore-based Temasek and has recently opened an office in Singapore, adding to its offices in London and New York. robinai.com
Gaia Family
“I challenge you to find one fertility clinic website that doesn’t show a baby in a blue blanket front and center,” says Nader AlSalim, CEO of Gaia Family. “But how you get to that baby—and more importantly if you ever get to it— is a lot less straightforward.” AlSalim speaks from first-hand experience: his wife underwent five rounds of IVF during three years until they had a child. “There’s a lack of transparency regarding clinical outcomes and treatment prices,” he says. “People start IVF without knowing where the total bill is going to land or how far they’ll be able to go.” AlSalim launched Gaia to address those problems: the startup takes upfront payments from clients and handles all costs for up to three cycles of IVF. Clients only pay back later, in installments, if they become parents. “We apply machine learning to large public datasets to predict fertility treatment outcomes and take on the financial risk if those treatments are unsuccessful,” AlSalim says. The startup, which has raised more than $23 million (£17.5 million), is available in the UK, Spain, Greece and the US. gaiafamily.com
Get Harley
“I suffered from acne, seborrheic dermatitis, and eczema at various stages of my life,” says Charmaine Chow, CEO of GetHarley. “In the past, I wasted huge amounts of time, money and energy trying to figure out what works for me. I imagined a service that would enable me to meet practitioners online and would deliver the difficult-to-access, medical grade products to my door in a timely manner.” That service didn’t exist, so Chow decided to invent it. GetHarley, the online consultation and clinician matching platform she launched in 2019, currently gives more that 150,000 patients access to a network of 1,500 skincare practitioners across the UK and Ireland. “We have seen triple-digit annual growth since our launch,” she says. “We also partner with more than 500 pharma brands, which allows practitioners to be brand agnostic when they are curating personalized skincare plans.” In August 2024, the company raised $52 million (£39.6 million), led by Index Ventures. getharley.com
Lindus Health
“When I was a VC investor, all the techbio companies I met shared the same frustration with clinical trials,” says Meri Beckwith, co-founder of Lindus Health. “They were late, over budget and getting exponentially more expensive. No one could really explain to me why.” Beckwith eventually realized that the culprits were the so-called contract research organizations (CRO), third-party entities that oversee and run clinical trials. “I was told that they make more money the worse the clinical trial goes,” Beckwith says. “That’s the industry’s dirty secret.” Lindus Health, founded by Beckwith and Michael Young, replaces the traditionally old-fashioned methods used by CROs with a technology platform that automates many of the phases of a clinical trial. This allows them to complete trials, on average, in half the time they usually take. “One example is real-time trial monitoring, which takes up to half of the trial’s budget,” he says. “CROs do this by physically sending someone to sites to examine paper records. Our software captures that data directly.”Lindus, which has raised $18 million (£13.7 million), has already been involved in 91 trials. lindushealth.com
Field
Field’s big batteries allow electricity grids to store renewable power when supply is high and release it when there’s demand. The company was founded in 2021 by former Bulb co-founder Amit Gudka. A year later, it switched on its first 20MWh battery storage site in Oldham, Greater Manchester. “That played an important part in keeping supplies steady and the lights on in the build-up to Christmas last year, when a large subsea cable transporting power between the UK and France tripped,” Gudka says. “It would have led to instability across the grid were it not for a number of batteries across the country, including ours.” The startup uses lithium-iron phosphate cells, sourced from a Chinese manufacturer, while other battery components are imported from Europe. The startup has raised £200 million ($152.4 million) from DIF Capital Partners and already has a presence in Italy, Germany and Spain. Three sites across Britain, totalling 190MWh, are currently in construction. field.energy
Opna
In 2017, Shilpika Gautam became the first person to stand-up paddle the entire length of the river Ganges. “On my expedition, I was introduced to renewable energy and forestry project developers who consistently shared the same challenge: they needed upfront financing to get started,” Gautam says. In 2022, she launched Opna, a platform that allows corporations that want to find, fund and monitor carbon removal projects. “Our mission is to unlock capital for high-quality climate projects that address climate change with speed, scale, and equity,” she says. So far, it has worked with more than 45 projects, in sectors such as agroforestry, blue carbon, biochar and direct air capture, generating more than $340 million (£401 million) in carbon credits. “We verify the integrity of information provided by suppliers and review all the risks associated with a project,” she says. “Our standardized diligence, contracting, and portfolio management tools can save buyers hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs, shrink deal timelines, and de-risk net-zero journeys by actively managing carbon removal portfolios for several years.” Opna has raised a seed round of $6.5 million (£7.6 million) led by Atomico. opna.earth
Sylvera
Sylvera verifies and rates the performance of carbon offsetting projects, helping corporate buyers make more informed decisions when purchasing carbon credits. The platform uses machine learning algorithms to assess factors such as the project’s carbon impact and accuracy of reporting based on a range of datasets from satellite data to LIDAR (light detection and ranging) scans. “We’re obsessed with getting project ratings right,” Allister Furey, CEO of Sylvera, says. “We spend up to 120 hours putting together every project rating and analysis, which includes rounds of testing to ensure we’ve come to the correct conclusion.” In May, it launched the Sylvera Catalog, which gives investors access to an overview of nearly 20,000 projects, from biochar to landfill methane. In July 2023, the company raised $57 million (£43.4 million) in series B funding led by Balderton Capital, taking its total external investment to $96 million (£73 million) since being founded in 2020 by Furey and Sam Gill. sylvera.com
PhysicsX
PhysicsX uses machine learning to run simulations for engineers in industries such as aerospace, automotive, energy and semiconductors. “AI-driven physics and chemistry simulation will fundamentally transform complex engineering and manufacturing,” says Robin Tuluie, CSEO of PhysicsX. “Our technology replaces standard simulation models with Large Physics Models. These models are as accurate as numerical simulation, but execute in a second or less. We’re talking about speeding up physics simulation by 104-105 times.” Although they can’t disclose names, Tuluie says clients already include a top Formula One team and major automotive and renewables companies. Founded by Tuluie, an astrophysicist and former chief scientist at Mercedes F1 team, and Jacomo Corbo, co-founder of data agency QuantumBlack, the startup has raised $32 million (£24.3 million) in funding led by General Catalyst. physicsx.ai
Newcleo
Nuclear technology startup Newcleo is developing a mini nuclear power plant which uses nuclear waste as fuel. Founded in 2021 by physicist Stefano Buono, the startup has already raised more than €400 million (£338.8 million) and employs more than 750 people located in fifteen offices across the UK, France, Switzerland and Italy. In 2024, NewCleo dropped plans to build a power plant in Cumbria, opting instead to invest £4 billion (€4.7 billion) in the south of France following personal lobbying from French President Emmanuel Macron. A demonstration model is currently being built in Italy and the first 30 MW prototypes are planned for 2030. newcleo.com
Volt
Volt is an open payments platform that enables merchants to receive direct payments in real-time. “I saw an industry that was ripe for disruption, based on technologies imagined and implemented in the 50s,” Tom Greenwood, CEO of Volt, says. “I could see that there was a new generation of payment infrastructure coming that was real-time.” Founded by Greenwood, Steffen Vollert and Jordan Lawrence, Volt is live today across 31 countries, including Europe, the UK, Brazil and Australia. In June last year, they raised a $60 million (£45.7 million) Series B led by IVP. Clients include FarFetch, Robinhood, Next, KLM, Air France and Xe.com. volt.io
This article first appeared in the November/December 2024 edition of WIRED UK.