With an advanced, diversified economy and technologically-savvy people, the UK is home to many startups and tech companies. The mature British startup ecosystem and availability of capital helps support multiple local startups to expand nationally and fuel their development across the world.
Involved in a number of industries and businesses, many of these startups are operating through software or cloud-based platform. Though the number of startups that operate through technology is clearly overwhelming, many of these companies are also operating in the financial sector, a traditional specialty of the UK’s economy. However, from e-commerce and to healthcare, from telecommunications to artificial intelligence, many UK startups are also engaged in the application of technology to new verticals, and the disruption of a large number of industries.
Though many of these companies are already well-known in the UK and abroad, reaching a large population with their products and services, some of them are less famous, as they focus on certain business niches and take charge of problems faced by specific professions. Others are competing against each other, particularly in the field of financial services and FinTech. Nevertheless, many of these British startups have already reached the status of “Unicorn”, that is to say, a valuation of more than a billion dollars.
For the complete list of the world’s unicorn startups, download our 580 Unicorn Startups Excel file which includes valuations, funds raised, known investors, websites link, descriptions, and much more information on each company,
List of the 30 top-funded startups from the United Kingdom
Here is the list of the top 30 best-funded British startups with details about each company, the total amount of funds received by the company in US $ or British £ according to Crunchbase, as of March 2020 (with GB £ converted to US $ with the rate of 1.2817 $/£), together with a direct link to the company’s website.
For more information on other world-leading startups, check our series of posts on Top Startups, and for more information on the country, read our articles on Top Business Resources for the UK.
Shortcuts to each startup
To facilitate your browsing in this long list, here are quick links to go directly to the details of any of the top 30 UK startups. Be sure to also check the Top 10 UK startups’ summary after the list!
30. eToro
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: $222.7 Million
eToro is a social trading investment platform. It allows users to share live trading information, learn from each other, and build upon the community’s activity. Founded in the United Kingdom in 2007, eToro has also opened offices in Cyprus and Israel.
Website: etoro.com
29. Checkout
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: $230 Million
Checkout.com is a company specialized in online payment solutions. Handling the entire payment process, Checkout.com works with more than 150 currencies and all international cards to provide merchants with one integrated platform that optimizes their payments, increases their revenues and fits their particular requirements.
Website: checkout.com
28. Darktrace
Industry: Privacy and Security – Total funding: $230.5 Million
Darktrace is a cybersecurity company that relies upon artificial intelligence. With tens of thousands of previously unknown threats identified, Darktrace uses self-learning algorithms to detect and respond to cyber threats in cloud networks and virtualized networks, IoT and industrial control systems.
Website: darktrace.com
27. Secret Escapes
Industry: Travel and Tourism – Total funding: $249.2 Million
Secret Escapes is a travel reservation platform specialized in luxury hotels and holidays with up to 60% price reduction. Operating in the UK and abroad, Secret Escapes provides members-only rates for a carefully selected number of hotels and holidays and exclusive deals.
Website: secretescapes.com
26. Snyk
Industry: Privacy and Security – Total funding: $252 Million
Snyk is a security company that focuses on finding and fixing vulnerabilities and license violations in open source dependencies and container images. It empowers software-driven businesses with developer-first tooling and security depth to build security into their continuous development process.
Website: snyk.io
25. BenevolentAI
Industry: Health Care – Total funding: $292 Million
BenevolentAI is a technology company focusing on accelerating the journey from data to medicines. It uses a computational and experimental technology platform for R&D programs to lower drug development costs, decrease failure rates and increase the speed at which medicines are generated.
Website: benevolent.ai
24. Ovo Energy
Industry: Energy – Total funding: £247 Million
Ovo Energy is an energy technology company and supplier aiming at making energy cheaper, greener, and simpler. Committed to becoming a net-zero carbon business by 2030, Ovo wants to change how energy is used in daily life with energy-efficient heaters, enhanced electric vehicles that produce energy and the development of new technologies.
Website: ovoenergy.com
23. BrewDog
Industry: Food and Beverage – Total funding: $373.9 Million
BrewDog is a craft beer brewery. Founded in Scotland in 2007, BrewDog spearheaded the revolution of craft beer in the UK, producing contemporary and progressive bottled and canned beers that challenge perceptions of beer and brewing all over the world.
Website: brewdog.com
22. CMR Surgical
Industry: Health Care – Total funding: $384.8 Million
CMR Surgical is a producer of medical devices for medical surgery. Their lead product, a surgical robot system, aims at improving patient outcomes by integrating into existing surgical workflows and reducing the physical and mental effort required from surgeons.
Website: cmrsurgical.com
21. WorldRemit
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: $407.7 Million
WorldRemit is specialized in money transfers. Operating through a digital platform, it allows to conveniently and cost-effectively send money abroad, through a computer, smartphone or tablet. Available to senders in 50 countries, WorldRemit can manage money transfers to 140+ destinations across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas.
Website: worldremit.com
20. Starling Bank
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: £323 Million
Starling Bank is a mobile baking application. It allows users to make payments, send money and manage their savings both for personal banking and business banking. Starling Bank also proposes accounts in Euros as well as joint accounts for couples.
Website: starlingbank.com
19. Monzo
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: £324.7 Million
Monzo is a digital bank. Targeted to heavy smartphone users, Monzo provides mobile banking services to manage money and payments and help its customers move their financial lives beyond traditional banking, cheques, and visits to a banking agency.
Website: monzo.com
18. Graphcore
Industry: Artificial Intelligence – Total funding: $460 Million
Graphcore is a company developing hardware systems to accelerate machine learning applications. Having created a new processor named the Intelligence Processing Unit, Graphcore products allow AI developers and researchers to run machine learning models much faster than previous hardware generations.
Website: graphcore.ai
17. Zopa
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: $464.5 Million
Zopa is a P2P money lending service. It allows borrowers to deal directly with lenders without any intermediary. It works by attributing credit grades to borrowers and allowing lenders to make offers according to these grades, amount and duration of the credit. Zopa then acts as the distributor of money and enforcer of the system.
Website: zopa.com
16. Iwoca
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: $474.8 Million
Iwoca provides financial services dedicated to small business. Its digital platform offers a number of financial tools to help SME with their growth, investments and cash flow while avoiding the hassles of traditional banking, such as paperwork, long waits, and rigid lending criteria.
Website: iwoca.co.uk
15. Atom Bank
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: £429 Million
Atom Bank is a mobile bank. It operates exclusively through a mobile application, allowing its customers to benefit from its low-cost model while providing 24/7 online support. Atom Bank also offers a range of personal and business banking products.
Website: atombank.co.uk
14. Truphone
Industry: Telecommunications – Total funding: $584.5 Million
A global mobile network provider, Truphone is a telecommunications company operating in mobile infrastructure and SIM technology. It connects more than 190 countries through its mobile network and allows multiple international numbers on a single SIM card, together with services in mobile recording and Internet-of-Things – IoT – solutions.
Website: truphone.com
13. Improbable
Industry: Media and Entertainment – Total funding: $604.1 Million
Improbable is a gaming and entertainment company. Thank to its programming platform, Improbable can run multiple servers in the cloud enabling it to simulate larger and more complex virtual worlds. They also aim to use their expertise in gamification to tackle problems in other industries.
Website: improbable.io
12. Babylon Health
Industry: Health Care – Total funding: $635.3 Million
Babylon Health is a digital health service provider. It relies on a mobile app, artificial intelligence, and medical experts to provide accessible and affordable, personalized health assessments, treatment advice and face-to-face appointments with a doctor 24/7.
Website: babylonhealth.com
11. BGL Group
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: £525 Million
BGL Group is a provider of insurance and household financial products. Tracing its origins to 1992, BGL has revamped its operations through technology, becoming a leading digital distributor of insurance and financial products. It also operates price comparison websites, including comparethemarket.com in the UK and LesFurets.com in France.
Website: bglgroup.co.uk
10. TransferWise
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: $772.7 Million
TransferWise is an international money transfer service. It provides customers, individuals, and businesses, an alternative to traditional means of international money transfers at a lower cost thanks to their digital platform and fee structure than undercuts standard bank fees.
Website: transferwise.com
9. Revolut
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: $837 Million
Revolut is a digital bank. It provides a number of banking and financial services through its digital platform, including pre-paid debit cards, currency exchange, and peer-to-peer payments. It allows customers to pay and withdraw money in more than 120 currencies, including 26 directly from its mobile app.
Website: revolut.com
8. Telegram Messenger
Industry: Information Technology – Total funding: $850 Million
Telegram Messenger is a messaging app focusing on privacy, security, and speed. Working across devices, Telegram enables users to send text, photos, videos and files of any type, create groups of up to 5000 people and communicate to anyone through private, self-destructing messages.
Website: telegram.org
7. Oxford Nanopore Technologies
Industry: Health Care – Total funding: £666.8 Million
Oxford Nanopore Technologies Limited is a company specialized in nanopore sequencing products for the analysis of molecules. Especially involved in the sequencing of DNA and RNA, it finds applications for biological research, including human genomics, cancer research, microbiology, plant science and environmental research in more than 80 countries.
Website: nanoporetech.com
6. OakNorth
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: $1 Billion
OakNorth provides credit analysis and monitoring solutions to credit institutions that lend to small and medium-sized businesses. Relying on machine learning, credit expertise, and big data, OakNorth allows banks and other financial institutions to work more efficiently and reduce risks. OakNorth also is the parent of OakNorth Bank, a leading digital bank in the UK.
Website: oaknorth.com
5. LendInvest
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: $1.3 Billion
LendInvest provides an online marketplace dedicated to property lending and investing. It allows any investor to access various asset classes, underwriting, and pre-funding investments, together with services such as loans for property financing.
Website: lendinvest.com
4. Prodigy Finance
Industry: Financial Services – Total funding: $1.3 Billion
Prodigy Finance is a digital platform specialized in loans to international postgraduate students and refinancing. Granting access to higher education, Prodigy Finance provides loans to students of more than 150 nationalities, funded by a community of alumni, institutional investors, and private investors.
Website: prodigyfinance.com
3. Deliveroo
Industry: Food and Beverage – Total funding: $1.5 Billion
Deliveroo is a company specialized in delivering restaurant meals to the household or office. Operating through a digital platform, Deliveroo works in marketing and selling of meals with restaurants through a point-of-sale order management terminals, and it optimizes its deliveries via an application on its delivery drivers’ smartphones.
Website: deliveroo.co.uk
2. The Hut Group
Industry: Commerce and Shopping – Total funding: $3.9 Billion
The Hut Group is an e-commerce company focusing on fast-moving consumer goods. Founded in 2004, The Hut Group has become one of the world’s leading online retail platform primarily engaged in the health and beauty categories. It operates more than 100 websites globally selling premium and non-perishable beauty, wellness, luxury, and lifestyle goods.
Website: thg.com
1. Global Switch
Industry: Information Technology – Total funding: £4.9 Billion
Global Switch develops and operates data centers in Europe and Asia-Pacific. Founded in 1998, Global Switch has steadily grown and raised capital to become one of the world’s largest data center operators, involved in large scale network dense, carrier and cloud-neutral multi-tenanted data centers.
Website: globalswitch.com
Summary: Top 10 UK Startups 2020
To give you a quick overview of the largest startups from the UK in 2020, here is a synthesizing image regrouping the information of the top 10. Note that you can use this image to embed it on your website and other digital properties using the embed code below.
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Here are the top 30 best-funded startups from the UK. Did we forget any? Did you buy any product or service from them? Which one do you think provides the most useful product? Let us know in the comments below!
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