United Kingdom startup ecosystem
The UK — and London in particular — remains Europe's deepest capital market for startups. World-class universities, a strong financial services sector, and a dense network of experienced operators make it a magnet for fintech, AI, and biotech ventures. Despite Brexit-related shifts, the UK continues to produce more unicorns than any other European country. The directory currently lists 317 organisations across 21 cities.
Showing 261–280 of 317United Kingdom
Cities in United Kingdom
Types in United Kingdom
United Kingdom results
Sherry Coutu
Sherry Coutu CBE is a prominent angel investor and entrepreneur known for championing the UK’s scale-up ecosystem. Originally from Canada, Coutu moved to the UK and in 1994 founded Interactive Investor, an online brokerage, which she led to an IPO in 2000. After exiting that venture, she became a full-time angel in 2000 and has since invested in 50+ tech companies, focusing on consumer internet, education, and fintech startups. Coutu has been an early backer of notable UK startups like Zoopla and LoveFilm, and holds LP stakes in several venture funds. Beyond investing her own capital, Sherry Coutu is famed for her advocacy of “scale-ups” – mid-stage companies poised for high growth. In 2014, she authored the landmark Scale-Up Report for the UK government, highlighting the economic importance of helping startups grow into larger firms. This led her, alongside LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, to found the ScaleUp Institute in 2015 – a nonprofit that provides resources, mentorship, and policy advocacy for scaling businesses. Coutu also founded Founders4Schools and Digital Boost, initiatives connecting students and small businesses with experienced entrepreneurs. She remains an active non-executive director on multiple boards – past roles include serving on the boards of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), the University of Cambridge Finance Board, and Pearson plc. In the angel community, Sherry Coutu is respected not only for her investments but for her mentorship and network: she often provides board-level guidance and operational mentorship to founders. Appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2013 for services to entrepreneurship, Sherry Coutu is a pivotal figure helping UK tech startups navigate the jump from startup to scale-up.
Sifted Summit 2026
The annual gathering for Europe's scaleup leaders, run by the FT-backed Sifted. Programming covers fundraising, AI adoption, and sustainability, with a strong investor presence and the Sifted 250 leaderboard — valuable for a growth-stage founder raising or scaling.
Signal AI
AI-powered external intelligence platform that ingests media, social, broadcast and regulatory data across 226 markets and 75+ languages to deliver enterprise risk, reputation and ESG insights. Founded in London, 2013.
Simon Beckerman
Founder of Depop, the social marketplace for secondhand fashion that became a cultural phenomenon with Gen Z before its acquisition by Etsy. A designer by background, he also co-founded PIG magazine.
Simon Knowles
Co-founder and CTO of Graphcore and the chief architect of its IPU processor. A serial chip designer, he co-founded Picochip and Element 14 before Graphcore.
Skyscanner
Skyscanner is a global travel search engine founded in Edinburgh that compares flights, hotels, and car rentals across hundreds of providers. Acquired by Ctrip (now Trip.com Group) in 2016 for $1.7 billion, Skyscanner continues to operate independently from Scotland and serves over 100 million monthly users. It remains one of Europe's most recognized consumer tech brands and a key reference point for Scotland's startup ecosystem.
Snyk
Snyk is a developer security platform founded in 2015 in London that helps software teams find and fix vulnerabilities in open-source dependencies, container images, infrastructure-as-code, and proprietary code. The company raised over $1 billion in funding and reached a peak valuation of $8.5 billion in 2021, becoming one of Europe's most valuable cybersecurity startups. Snyk integrates directly into developer workflows and CI/CD pipelines, positioning security as a developer-first concern. It serves over 1,500 enterprise customers including Google, Salesforce, and Atlassian.
Solve Intelligence
Solve Intelligence builds an AI platform for intellectual property and patent work, acting as a co-pilot for IP law. Its software helps teams collect ideas from inventors, draft patent applications, respond to office actions, handle continuations and divisionals, and coordinate global patent filings across technical domains. The company is a Y Combinator alumnus with operations in London and San Francisco, founded by Chris Parsonson (CEO), his brother Angus Parsonson (CTO), and Sanj Ahilan. In December 2025 it raised a $40 million Series B co-led by Visionaries and 20VC, bringing total funding to roughly $55 million.
Sona
Sona is a London-based workforce management platform built for frontline and deskless workers in industries such as hospitality and healthcare. Its integrated, AI-powered system combines scheduling, HR, payroll, compliance and business intelligence tools into a single people operating system. Founded in 2021 by Steffen Wulff Petersen, Oli Johnson and Ben Dixon, the company aims to serve the large global population of frontline workers. In April 2026 Sona raised a $45 million Series B led by N47, with participation from Felicis, Northzone, Gradient and Italian Founders Fund, taking total funding above $100 million.
Sonali De Rycker
Partner at Accel and one of Europe's most influential venture investors, leading the firm's London office. She has backed Spotify, Monzo, BeReal and KRY, and focuses on AI, consumer and fintech companies across Europe and Israel.
Space-Comm Expo Europe 2027
The UK's space-industry expo and conference at ExCeL London, connecting space companies, defence, and the broader supply chain. For spacetech and deeptech founders it is the main UK venue to meet agencies, primes, and investors active in the space economy.
Stability AI
Stability AI is a London-based artificial intelligence company founded in 2019 that develops open and openly licensed generative models across images, video, audio and 3D, best known for the Stable Diffusion text-to-image model. It positions itself around accessible, open generative AI for creators, developers and enterprises.
Starling Bank
Starling Bank is a London-based digital bank founded in 2014 by Anne Boden, offering personal, business and joint current accounts through a mobile app under a full UK banking licence. It was one of the first British neobanks to reach sustained profitability and also licenses its banking technology to other institutions through its Engine software subsidiary. It employs several thousand people and reports revenue of more than 880 million pounds.
Steel Media
Steel Media Ltd is a Bath-based games-industry media and events company, part of Enthusiast Gaming, that publishes PocketGamer.biz and runs the Pocket Gamer Connects conference series. PGC events gather mobile and games developers, publishers, platform holders and investors in cities including Helsinki, Barcelona, Malmo, London and Toronto, each pairing a multi-track conference with a dealmaking floor and an indie showcase.
Steffen Tjerrild
Co-founder and COO/CFO of Synthesia, the AI video-generation platform. He runs the company's operations and finance alongside CEO Victor Riparbelli as Synthesia became one of Europe's most valuable generative-AI companies.
Stephen Chandler
Managing Partner and co-founder of Notion Capital, the London B2B SaaS and fintech firm he started in 2009 with the MessageLabs team. He has backed European software leaders including GoCardless and Currencycloud and helped grow Notion to over $1bn AUM.
Steven Bartlett
British entrepreneur, investor and author. He founded social-media marketing firm Social Chain in 2014 and later co-founded Flightstory, a media and investment company. He hosts The Diary of a CEO, one of the world's most listened-to business podcasts, and is an investor on the BBC's Dragons' Den.
Stream
Stream, rebranded from Wagestream in September 2025, is an employer-partnered workplace finance platform. Through partner employers, frontline workers gain flexible early access to their earned wages, alongside budgeting and financial-planning tools, a savings account, affordable credit, and money coaching. In 2025 it expanded into workplace pensions via its acquisition of Zippen. The platform serves several million workers across more than 2,000 employers in the UK, Europe, and the US, with partners including Asda, Bupa, Greene King, and the NHS.
Summize
Summize is a Manchester-based legaltech company offering an AI-powered contract lifecycle management platform. Its SaaS technology is designed to unite legal teams and business stakeholders so they can draft, review and manage contracts more efficiently. Founded in 2018 by former general counsel Tom Dunlop and software engineer David Smith, the company counts customers such as Revolut among its roster. In early 2026 Summize raised $50 million to accelerate product development and global growth, building on an earlier Series A backed by YFM Equity Partners and Maven Capital Partners.
SumUp
SumUp is a leading European fintech providing mobile point-of-sale card readers and a suite of financial tools for small merchants. The company serves over 4 million businesses across 35+ countries, offering card acceptance, invoicing, business accounts, and online payment links. SumUp has become the go-to payments partner for micro and small businesses across Europe and beyond, competing with Square in the SMB payments space.
