Britain’s artificial intelligence sector is expanding rapidly, attracting venture capital, government backing and a wave of startups building AI-powered products. But as the industry grows, the question of who gets to build it has become more urgent.
Between 2013 and 2023, Black founders collectively received 0.89% of UK venture investment, according to research by Extend Ventures. For Black female founders, that figure fell to 0.14%. Yet Black women are building.
This list brings together 10 founders at the intersection of AI and real-world markets — beauty, music, advertising, employment, human resources, identity and retail.
Simi Lindgren – Yuty
Simi Lindgren founded Yuty in London in 2020 after confronting a familiar consumer problem: finding beauty products that work for individual skin tones, hair types and preferences. The platform uses proprietary AI to match shoppers to skincare, makeup and haircare based on their personal profile rather than broad categories.
The company was born during the pandemic and raised £500,000 in pre-seed funding in 2021 from investors including Ada Ventures. Lindgren, who is of Nigerian heritage, has positioned Yuty around inclusive discovery at a time when much of beauty retail still relies on one-size-fits-all recommendations.
Katie Debrah – Halo & Echo
Katie Debrah has spent her career at the intersection of law, content and advertising. After roles in digital production and a stint at Google where she built creative advertising products across EMEA, she founded Halo & Echo in 2017.
The London-based studio has since developed HypeMuse, an AI-powered platform that analyses why social videos perform or underperform. Rather than focusing solely on content generation, the tool helps brands, agencies and labels understand audience behaviour and improve creative output. The company has worked with Channel 4, Sony Music UK, Innovate UK and Digital Catapult.
Chloé Ameh – That’s My Jamm
After more than 15 years in the music industry, including a decade at Sony Music working on campaigns for artists including Beyoncé, Tyla and Tems, Chloé Ameh founded That’s My Jamm in 2023.
The London company began as a music consultancy and artist development business. It is now building Jamm Infinity, a platform that uses AI to help independent artists and their teams plan releases, manage campaigns and grow their businesses. For African and diaspora artists navigating international markets, the product aims to provide capabilities traditionally concentrated inside major labels.
Oyinkansola Adebayo – Niyo
Oyinkansola Adebayo founded Niyo in 2018 with a broader mission: using technology to create economic opportunities for women, particularly Black women.
Based in Birmingham, Niyo started in skills and employment, supporting over 7,000 learners through partnerships with employers including Goldman Sachs, KPMG and GCHQ. The company, which says it has generated over £3 million in revenue, is now developing an agentic AI platform that maps individual capabilities to personalised pathways into work.
Its beauty technology vertical, Jorra, allows customers to explore hairstyles and receive recommendations before booking appointments, linking personalisation in work and beauty — two markets where access has economic consequences.
Farirai Gora – We Are Eden
Farirai Gora spent 13 years in insurance and product innovation before founding We Are Eden in London in 2023. Her experience with dysmenorrhea while working in financial services informed the company’s product.
We Are Eden has built Policy Pulse, an AI-powered platform designed to give managers clinically informed, legally compliant guidance for sensitive workplace conversations, including those around reproductive health. The platform is positioned as talent risk management, helping financial services firms address inclusion and a productivity gap the company estimates at £20 billion.
We Are Eden was selected for the Discovery Spark Accelerator in 2024 and the KPMG UK Black Entrepreneur Awards in 2026.
Toju Duke – Diverse AI
Toju Duke spent 10 years at Google, including as a Responsible AI programme manager across product and research teams. In 2023, she co-founded Diverse AI with Steph Wright.
Diverse AI is structured as a community interest company rather than a venture-backed startup. It focuses on research, education and advocacy around inclusive AI, including the development of image datasets intended to better represent communities often missing from training data. The work addresses a foundational question for the sector: gaps in training data affect how systems recognise and respond to different populations, with implications for recruitment, healthcare and financial services.
Effie Kanyua – LILA Assistant
Effie Kanyua is a former BBC journalist who held senior communications roles at Hearst UK and Bauer Media. In 2024, she founded We Are Warriors PR and subsequently developed LILA Assistant.
Launched in February 2024, LILA is an AI writing and content-creation tool for creative professionals and small businesses. The platform emphasises ethical AI and data privacy, allowing users to retain control over voice and confidential information. Kanyua has also worked with The Dyslexia Association, informing the product’s focus on accessibility for neurodivergent users.
Obii Okafor – Capstone
Obiageli Okafor, known professionally as Obii Okafor, is a Nigerian-born product leader based in London. A Senior Product Manager at 8×8, she is co-founder of PMHelp, a platform that has provided mentoring and career programmes to more than 52,000 professionals across 70 countries.
In 2024, she began building Capstone, an AI-powered learning platform that uses work simulations to help professionals demonstrate practical skills. The product addresses a persistent barrier in technology hiring: employers demand experience that candidates struggle to obtain through traditional training. In 2026, Okafor became the first African woman to receive the Women in Telecoms Champion Award at the Comms Council UK Awards.
Yasmin Greenaway – Dermie.AI
Yasmin Greenaway founded Dermie.AI in London, a deep-tech company specialising in building computer vision models for the detection and management of dermatological disease. A scientist by training and a former financial business analyst, Greenaway previously founded Base Plus, a personalised skincare brand, before moving into AI diagnostics.
The company was named the UK’s most promising small Black-owned business at KPMG’s Black Entrepreneurs’ Awards in 2024. Its work sits at the intersection of beauty technology and healthcare, developing AI models that aim to improve detection and management of skin conditions, including for skin tones often under-represented in dermatology datasets.
Ayaan Mohamed – Digitech Oasis
Ayaan Mohamed founded Digitech Oasis in Manchester, a robotics and AI company developing autonomous mobile robots and AI systems for retail and warehouse operations. The platform is designed to help retailers and warehouse operators automate inventory management and improve operational efficiency at a time of rising labour costs and supply chain pressure.
Mohamed was named winner of the most promising large business at KPMG’s Black Entrepreneurs’ Awards in 2024. The award recognised her work building AI-powered robotics for a sector where Britain has seen growing demand for automation, positioning Digitech Oasis within the UK’s emerging physical AI ecosystem.
Together, the ten companies illustrate that the future of AI in Britain will not be shaped solely by large models or infrastructure spending. It will also be shaped by founders who understand specific markets, languages and consumer realities — and who are building products for populations historically underserved by mainstream technology.
