Home to companies such as Google DeepMind and Wayve, a large academic research base and a network of technology investors, Britain’s AI economy is rapidly accelerating.
In the first half of 2026 alone, UK startups raised $17bn, with AI startups accounting for $12.6bn, almost three-quarters of VC investment during the period.
This growth has been witnessed year on year, with over 5,862 AI companies operating across the UK as of the latest AI sector study, up from 3,713 in the previous year.
The sector generated an estimated £23.9 billion in revenue and £11.8 billion in Gross Value Added (GVA), while AI-related inward investment in 2024 included 51 projects representing more than £15 billion in capital investment and is projected to create over 6,500 jobs, backed by major expansions from international tech firms and local VC deals.
This shows obvious gains for the government, and attempts have been made to institutionalise AI in the country.
Britain is betting heavily on AI
The January 2025 AI Opportunities Action Plan set out 50 recommendations for growing the UK’s AI sector, increasing adoption, and strengthening the country’s ability to develop and commercialise AI. One year later, the government said it had completed 38 of the 50 actions.
The government has committed up to £500 million for a new Sovereign AI Unit designed to support UK AI companies and build domestic capability. It has also committed £1 billion to expand the country’s AI Research Resource, while a separate £240 million allocation is supporting the AI Security Institute.
The UK’s AI commitment also extends to the physical infrastructure behind the economy. Its AI Growth Zones programme is designed to attract investment into AI-enabled data centres by improving access to power and planning support. Five AI growth zones have been announced, while the government has committed to increasing national AI compute capacity substantially.
In June, Britain went another step further with its UK AI Hardware Plan, focused on chips and semiconductor technologies underpinning AI, alongside investment in skills, procurement, and international partnerships.
The government has said its efforts translate to a deliberate attempt to build an AI economy rather than merely consume AI products.
The Access Barrier
For founders, this AI investment boom creates an unusually interesting moment: there is more capital, intentional infrastructure, and even several accelerator activities feeding into the increasing demand for AI products.
But the question of who gets access to that opportunity remains unresolved.
Approximately 2.5 million people identify as Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African, per the most recent census.
According to the British Business Bank, around 4.4% of the UK’s early-stage entrepreneurs are Blacks, representing only 0.1% of UK SMEs. This discrepancy points to the fact that starting a business and building a scalable, Black employer-led company are very different propositions. Ethnic minority workers account for around 25% of the UK’s tech workforce, but representation falls to approximately 13% in senior technology roles.
These entrepreneurs also face capital challenges. The British Business Bank’s research also found that 59% of Black entrepreneurs said they find it difficult to obtain external finance. Digital Catapult reports that only 0.89% of UK investment went to Black founders between 2013 and 2023, with Black female founders receiving just 0.14%. Additionally, research from Google found that Black founders captured just 1% of UK VC funding in 2022, proving a much lesser percentage of the existence of Black-led VC firms.
This stifles growth and places the country at risk of highly valued talent flight across many sectors.
AI could reproduce the marginal pattern across the venture landscape or provide an opportunity to change it. TechDisrupts highlights a curated list of Black founders building AI startups in Britain. The founders come from different backgrounds spanning law, engineering, entertainment, etc. Some are immigrants, while others have spent their entire careers in Britain.
The following is not an exhaustive list.
10 Black-founded AI startups building in Britain
- Richard Robinson – Robin AI
Lawyer-turned-entrepreneur Richard Robinson founded Robin AI alongside machine-learning scientist James Clough of Imperial College London in 2019.
Robin AI uses generative AI and machine learning to help legal teams draft, review, negotiate and search contracts. Its model combines large language models, proprietary contract data and human legal expertise.
In January 2024, Robin AI announced a $26 million Series B, led by Singapore’s Temasek, with QuantumLight, Plural and AFG Partners also participating, taking the company into a new phase of international expansion. The company says its software can reduce contract-review time substantially and is used by businesses and legal teams in multiple markets. Its customers include PwC, Yum! Brands, AlbaCore Capital Group and BlueEarth Capital.
Robinson trained and worked as a corporate lawyer, including at Clifford Chance, before turning the frustrations he experienced in legal work into a technology company.
There is also a personal dimension to Robinson’s interest in making legal expertise more accessible. His parents migrated to England from Jamaica, and he has spoken publicly about family experiences in which access to professional advice and the value generated from creative work were not always straightforward.
- Tomide Adesanmi – Circuit Mind
Founder and CEO Tomide Adesanmi moved to Britain from Nigeria in 2009 to study electronics engineering at the University of Leeds.
He subsequently spent five years at BAE Systems working on high-integrity display systems for fighter pilots. It was there that he encountered the painstaking process of designing electronic systems, which could take months or years.
That experience became the starting point for Circuit Mind.
The company’s software uses AI to automate elements of electronic engineering, turning design requirements into circuit architectures and schematics much faster than traditional workflows.
The company says it has raised $15 million since 2018. Circuit Mind also received support from Google’s Black Founders Fund in 2021.
- Nnamdi Emelifeonwu – Definely
Nnamdi Emelifeonwu is a Nigerian migrant and former Freshfields lawyer. He co-founded Definely in 2017 with Feargus MacDaeid, who both worked at Freshfields, one of the UK’s Magic Circle law firms.
MacDaeid, registered blind, found navigating complex legal documents particularly difficult. The pair realised that a solution designed around accessibility could also solve a much broader problem for lawyers.
Definely now uses AI to help legal professionals draft, review, understand and navigate complex contracts. Its products integrate directly into Microsoft Word rather than forcing lawyers into a separate workflow.
In June 2025, Definely raised a $30 million Series B, taking total funding to approximately $40 million. The company said it had more than 100 customers across law firms and corporate legal teams and had almost tripled annual recurring revenue in 2024.
Its customer base includes firms such as A&O Shearman, Slaughter and May, DLA Piper and Dentons, as well as companies including BT and Deloitte.
- Tai Alegbe – Contingent
Tai Alegbe co-founded Contingent, an AI-powered platform focused on supply chain risk. He studied Finance and Technology at Oxford’s Saïd Business School and Business Sustainability Management at Cambridge. His earlier professional experience included regulatory compliance, risk management and equity derivatives, including work connected to organisations such as DTCC and Arachnys.
Before Contingent, Alegbe had spent time in the United States working to understand how high-growth technology businesses operated before returning to Britain.
Contingent uses AI and data to help companies monitor suppliers, identify emerging risks and manage compliance and procurement. The company’s proposition is increasingly relevant in a world where businesses have become acutely aware that disruption can emerge anywhere in a global supply chain.
Contingent has raised $11 million in funding to date.
- Ifeanyichukwu Ezinmadu – SymphoMe
Ifeanyichukwu Ezinmadu studied music at the University of Edinburgh and worked as a piano teacher, orchestra conductor and classical pianist. This exposed him to a recurring problem: students often leave lessons without meaningful feedback between sessions.
That became the foundation for SymphoMe, founded in 2023. SymphoMe uses AI and audio technology to provide musicians with real-time feedback while also giving educators tools to create courses and communities.
Ezinmadu’s company was selected for the second cohort of the Digital Catapult’s Black Founders Programme in 2024 and subsequently secured a Scottish Enterprise £100,000 SMART grant in the same year.
- Katie Debrah – Halo And Echo
A law graduate turned YouTube creator, Katie Debrah built a career in digital-first content before joining Google, where she worked across major brands and markets in North America, Europe and the Middle East.
She subsequently founded Halo And Echo, an AI-native creative studio, in 2017. Its technology, HypeMuse, uses AI to help brands create original content and digital campaigns.
Debrah brings more than a decade of experience in marketing and creative production to the company. She has driven over $1 billion in cumulative campaign revenue, led 75+ global music and culture projects and worked on thousands of paid advertisements.
In 2025, Debrah was also selected for Digital Catapult’s Black Founders Programme.
- Chloé Ameh – That’s My Jamm
Chloé Ameh spent more than 15 years in the music industry, including a decade at Sony Music, and held senior roles involving artist marketing and label management. During that career, she worked on campaigns involving artists including Beyoncé, Tyla and Tems. Her team also won a Music Week Award for a 2023 campaign for Cat Burns.
In 2023, she left Sony and launched That’s My Jamm as a strategic music consultancy and artist-management platform. Its AI-powered platform, Jamm Infinity, is designed to help artists and creative teams create, plan and grow more effectively.
This helps artists and creators understand what audiences are responding to, while also producing and distributing content quickly enough to remain relevant.
- Jason Calder-McLaren – SportQube
Jason Calder-McLaren is a football coach and holds a UEFA B licence. His experience spans grassroots coaching, player development and talent identification.
His company, SportQube, provides grassroots sports clubs with affordable video technology and AI-driven analytics.
The idea is that sophisticated performance analysis and talent identification should not be limited to elite clubs with large budgets. SportQube’s platform uses video and AI analytics to help coaches and players understand performance and improve talent identification.
The company was selected for Digital Catapult’s 2025 Black Founders Programme.
- Tobi Akinyemi – TwoShot
British-Irish entrepreneur Tobi Akinyemi is a software engineer and music creator. Before TwoShot, he was a founding engineer at Documatic, where he worked on AI-powered coding tools. Akinyemi is also a musician, and he initially started building what became TwoShot to solve his own problems around music creation and sampling.
TwoShot uses AI to allow musicians to generate and remix music through descriptions, humming and other inputs. The platform has a library of more than 200,000 samples, alongside natural-language search and integration with digital audio workflows.
But the company is also tackling one of the biggest problems facing generative AI in music: rights.
TwoShot has built traceability and attribution into its approach, working with rights holders and technology partners to develop models that can identify and compensate contributors.
- Steven Paul Goldman & Alexander Kenlock – Limitless XYZ
Limitless XYZ, co-founded by Steven Paul Goldman and Alexander Kenlock in 2021 as a talent-development organisation. The company subsequently evolved its core offerings into a data-driven music-technology platform providing artists visibility over their finances, growth metrics, and career education to help them maintain complete control of their careers.
Managing director Goldman’s background includes music and education at Point Blank Music School, while Kenlock is an ex-professional footballer. In 2026, they launched Limitless Labs, an initiative hosting a Creator Fund of up to £1,000 per project and networking spaces for London-based music and entertainment creatives.
Limitless XYZ was also selected for the Digital Catapult’s 2025 Black Founders Programme.
Britain is investing heavily in the infrastructure needed for the AI economy; however, infrastructure alone does not create an inclusive technology ecosystem. The numbers already reveal what venture capital and structural design continue to omit.
This is both a diversity and an economic imperative. The pipeline of Black founders in Britain continues to grow; what happens when viable commerce moves away completely from the borders? And for the UK-Africa corridor, there is another layer.
Many of Britain’s Black technology founders have personal, professional or cultural connections to Africa. These companies demonstrate knowledge transfer across various technology centres, building on wide-angled lenses.
Britain wants to be an AI superpower, but as billions of pounds flow into artificial intelligence infrastructure and startups, who gets to build that future? The next phase of the UK AI story is a question of whether the opportunity to build that economy will become as broad as the technology itself.
