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Top 100 Big Data Companies in the UK | 2026

Lily Ruaah,
 8 April 2026

Big data is at the heart of the UK’s technology economy, underpinning everything from AI-driven drug discovery and financial analytics to climate monitoring and defence intelligence. Investment in the sector has accelerated dramatically in recent years, with £1.51b raised in 2025 alone — and 2026 is already on track to surpass that, with £1.68b raised in Q1 alone. Collectively, UK big data companies have now raised £8.05b in equity funding.

We’ve ranked the top 100 big data companies by total equity raised (all data sourced from the Beauhurst platform).

What is big data?

Big data refers to the collection, processing, and analysis of datasets that are too large or complex for traditional methods. Big data companies develop the infrastructure, platforms, and applications that enable organisations to extract insights from vast volumes of structured and unstructured data. Applications span financial services, healthcare and life sciences, defence and security, energy, retail, agriculture, and environmental monitoring.

The UK currently has 547 active big data companies, having grown 93% over the past decade (from 283 in 2015). While this growth rate is more moderate than some emerging sectors, it reflects the fact that big data is a more established category with deep roots in enterprise software and research.

Collectively, these companies have raised £8.05b in equity funding so far, with a remarkable £6.89b — over 85% of the total — secured since 2020 alone. This sharp acceleration reflects the explosion of AI and machine learning, which has massively increased demand for data infrastructure, annotation, and analytics. These companies employ an estimated 28,515 people and generate a combined turnover of £4.40b.

Key findings

  • NScale, which develops AI data centre and GPU supercluster infrastructure, dominates the ranking with £2.62b raised — more than eight times the amount raised by second-placed Exscientia (£299.8m), an AI-driven drug discovery company based in Tayside. BenevolentAI (£253.0m), Matillion (£226.8m), and 9fin (£198.2m) complete the top five.
  • London accounts for 58 of the top 100 companies. The South East follows with 11, and the East of England has six. Scotland is notably well represented, with companies in Tayside (Exscientia, IceRobotics) and the West of Scotland (Chemify, Aridhia). Northern Ireland also features four companies, including Cumulus Neuroscience and Analytics Engines.
  • The top 100 are evenly split between Venture (37 companies) and Growth (36 companies) stages, with just seven Established businesses and nine already exited. This balance suggests a sector that is actively scaling — past the earliest stages but with significant headroom for further growth.
  • The top 100 have collectively raised £5.93b — representing roughly 74% of all big data equity funding in the UK. However, NScale’s £2.62b alone accounts for 44% of the top 100 total, making this the most top-heavy distribution of any sector we’ve analysed.

Methodology

To be included in this list of big data companies, companies must be:

  • Headquartered in the UK
  • Operating in the ‘Big Data’ Beauhurst industry classification
  • Listed as ‘Active’ on Companies House

We’ve then ranked these companies by total equity raised.

And if you’re a Beauhurst subscriber, you can try this search for yourself.

All data for the analysis was taken from the Beauhurst platform, and is accurate as of 7 April 2026.

All data for the ranking list was taken from the Beauhurst platform, and is automatically updated weekly.

Top 100 big data companies in the UK

10.

Total amount raised: £185m
Total equity rounds: 5
Established: 2014
Location: Oxford

Oxa develops software designed to power driverless vehicles, with technology that uses features such as cameras and lasers in order to sense and navigate the surrounding environment. In 2023, the UK government announced that Oxa had been included in their Advanced Manufacturing Plan, setting out £150m of investment to supercharge the self-driving vehicle sector. They have received £185m to date through five rounds of fundraising, including £113m in December 2022, aimed at selling its software to a wider range of industries and growing worldwide.

9. Callsign

Total amount raised: £215m
Total equity rounds: 5
Established: 2010
Location: City of London

Focusing on creating smooth customer interactions, AI company Callsign has produced technology for passive authentication, fraud prevention, and intelligence. Its proprietary technology uses artificial intelligence to mimic how humans recognise each other. In October 2021, Visa choseCallsign as their preferred behavioural biometric and device intelligence identity partner across Europe. Callsign is the world’s fastest-growing behavioural authentication and intelligence company. It has raised a total of £215m in investment, across five funding rounds. The company’s main investors include JP Morgan, AllegisCyber, and NightDragon Security.

8. Lendable

Total amount raised: £216m
Total equity rounds: 7
Established: 2014
Location: Hackney

Lendable is a fintech company developing a peer-to-peer lending platform for consumer finance. The company’s AI software matches users with appropriate investors, leveraging artificial intelligence and automated underwriting to quickly approve loans. Lendable also offers loans to those with lower credit scores to provide a fairer borrowing solution. Lendable has raised £216m, across seven funding rounds, since 2014. It’s expanded to offices in New York, Nairobi, and Singapore, and has featured in several high growth lists: 2022’s FT 1000, the Deloitte Fast 50 in both 2019 and 2020, and the Fast Tech Track 100, also in 2019 and 2020. Additionally, in 2018, Lendable participated in Addleshaw Goddard’s AG Elevate accelerator programme for scaling fintech startups.

7. Huma

Total amount raised: £236m
Total equity rounds: 10
Established: 2011
Location: Westminster

​​Huma (previously Medopad) is developing a web-based portal for hospitals and healthcare professionals to contain, manage, and collect health records. This data is then accessible to patients through a mobile app. Alongside its main goal of managing healthcare data, Huma also works on digital health insights and has developed wearable technology to detect digital biomarkers and assess health in real-time. Huma has been working with many organisations around the world, including the NHS, to monitor COVID-19 patients remotely. The AI company has secured £236m in fundraisings, from investors including Healthbox, Nexus Investments, Bayer, and NWS Holdings. In 2020, the company acquired two businesses: stress and productivity biometric startup BioBeats, and Tarilian, an optoelectronic sensor company that makes technology for measuring blood pressure and heart monitoring. They have since acquired Alcedis, developers of a platform for the digitisation of clinical trials that can be integrated with third-party systems, and iPLATO, developers of an app that improves patients’ access to GP practices through an online booking system, and provides a platform for healthcare campaigns.

6. Patsnap

Total amount raised: £251m
Total equity rounds: 4
Established: 2007
Location: Southwark

Patsnap has created a web-based platform to help clients assess intellectual property patents, with access to patent expiry dates, licensing, renewal, and legal information for tech companies. The lawtech company’s platform is powered by artificial intelligence algorithms and natural language processing, to parse patents and IP, as well as extract and cross-match critical information. It can even analyse more complex documents, like clinical trials, chemical structures patents, and litigation records. Patsnap has over 10k customers in over 50 countries, including big names like Tesla, Dyson, and NASA. So far, the company has secured £251m in investment, across four funding rounds.

5. Quantexa

Total amount raised: £286m
Total equity rounds: 6
Established: 2016
Location: Lambeth

Quantexa is a cybersecurity firm that develops AI technology to secure organisations’ data and flag illegal activity. It works closely with industries that handle large datasets (such as banking, e-commerce, and the public sector), to create analytical models that uncover data risk, reveal opportunities, and enhance decision making. The company is backed by AlbionVC, Dawn Capital, HSBC Enterprise Fund, and Accenture, among others. In its latest funding round, Quantexa raised £104m in investment. This took the company’s total fundraisings to £286m. Quantexa has attended both the Microsoft ScaleUp accelerator and Tech Nation’s Future Fifty accelerator. It has also appeared on several high-growth lists, including The Telegraph’s Tech Hot 100, Fast Track’s Tech Track 100, InsurTech 100, and the 2021 edition of The Regtech 100.

4. Gousto

Total amount raised: £321m
Total equity rounds: 14
Established: 2012
Location: Shepherds Bush

Gousto is a meal kit delivery service that provides exact ingredients and portions to customers with instructions on how to prepare the dish. The food tech unicorn, backed by celebrity fitness coach, Joe Wicks, and Japanese investment giant SoftBank, is powered by AI, a technology used since its founding. They have received £321m in funding to date, through 14 rounds of funding. The most recent of these was in February 2023, which saw £50m invested to support them during times of economic uncertainty. Their post-money valuation was listed as £239m. They have been named on a number of high-growth lists, including the FT 1000, Fast Track Tech Track 100, and Top 100 – Britain’s Fastest Growing Businesses. They also attended the Future Fifty accelerator in 2017.

3. Cera

Total amount raised: £366m
Total equity rounds: 9
Established: 2015
Location: Islington

Cera provides homecare, telehealth consultations, and prescription services, which can be managed through a mobile app, which also allows users to book appointments with nurses on demand. To date, they have secured £366m through nine rounds of fundraising. In August 2022, they raised £81.3m to invest in increasing their capacity to help more patients, a project that was invested into by 8090 Partners, Evolve Healthcare Partners, Guinness Ventures, and Jane Street, amongst others. They have attended DigitalHealth.London Accelerator, PwC Scale Programmes, and Govstart.

2. Thought Machine

Total amount raised: £392m
Total equity rounds: 8
Established: 2011
Location: Islington

Thought Machine develops fintech software Vault, which enables banks and financial services providers to centrally manage a range of products. Its core banking platforms can be used to run day-to-day operations, improving the cost, speed, and adaptability of legacy systems. Thought Machine’s software is accessed through an API and has a large artificial intelligence component. The AI company has raised £398m in growth capital so far, across seven funding rounds, with the likes of Molten Ventures (previously Draper Esprit), IQ Capital, Playfair Capital, and British Patient Capital. Its most recent fundraising, secured in July 2020, saw the company valued at £221m pre-money. Alongside new investors ING Ventures, JP Morgan Chase Strategic Investments, and Standard Charter Investments, this latest raise also saw Thought Machine reach unicorn status.

1. Graphcore

Total amount raised: £528m
Total equity rounds: 9
Established: 2016
Location: City of Bristol

Graphcore operates in the semiconductor processing chip industry, developing and manufacturing chips made specifically to accelerate artificial intelligence and machine learning tasks. Graphcore’s chips use Intelligence Process Unit (IPU) technology, housing 1,472 separate IPU-Cores, capable of executing 8,832 separate parallel computing threads. The Bristol-based AI startup has grown from strength to strength since 2016, with a total of nine funding rounds under its belt, which saw it reach unicorn status after just four years of trading. Graphcore has raised more than half a billion pounds in investment, and is partnered with large tech companies such as Microsoft and Dell Technologies. The company has offices in London, Cambridge, Oslo, Beijing, Seoul, and across the US.
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The future of big data in the UK

The UK big data sector is in the middle of an unprecedented investment surge. The £1.51b raised in 2025 was more than triple the 2024 figure of £465.7m, and Q1 2026 has already seen £1.68b — driven largely by massive infrastructure rounds for AI data centre and GPU computing companies like NScale and NexGen Cloud.

This reflects a broader structural shift: as AI models grow larger and more data-hungry, the demand for compute infrastructure, data pipelines, and annotation tools is scaling in tandem. Companies like Encord (data annotation), Matillion (data integration), and Ably (real-time data streaming) are building the foundational layer that AI depends on.

Healthcare and life sciences remain a particularly strong application area, with companies including Exscientia, BenevolentAI, Causaly, Lifebit, and Baseimmune all using big data approaches to accelerate drug discovery and clinical research. Defence and security is another growing vertical, with Faculty, Adarga, and Mind Foundry applying data analytics to national security challenges.

New company formations have remained steady at around 15–35 per year, and with the UK government investing heavily in AI infrastructure and data sovereignty, the conditions for continued growth in this sector are exceptionally strong.

FAQ

The top 100 big data companies in the UK is a ranking of the most prominent UK-based big data businesses, ordered by the total equity funding they have raised. It highlights companies operating across data infrastructure, analytics platforms, AI-driven data processing, and sector-specific data applications.

Companies are ranked by total equity raised, using data from the Beauhurst platform. This provides a consistent, objective measure of investor confidence and growth potential.

UK big data companies have raised £8.05b in equity funding to date, with £6.89b of that secured since 2020. The sector is currently experiencing record investment levels, with £1.51b raised in 2025 and £1.68b in Q1 2026 alone.

Big data refers to the collection, processing, and analysis of datasets that are too large or complex for traditional methods. Big data companies build the infrastructure, platforms, and tools that enable organisations to extract insights from vast volumes of data — powering applications in AI, healthcare, finance, defence, and more.

London is the largest hub with 58 of the top 100 companies. The South East has 11, and the East of England has six. Scotland and Northern Ireland are also well represented with companies across Tayside, the West of Scotland, and Belfast.

Yes — and rapidly. The number of active companies has grown 93% over the past decade to 547. Investment has accelerated sharply, with over 85% of all funding raised since 2020. The sector is currently experiencing its strongest ever period of investment.

UK big data companies span a wide range of activities, including AI infrastructure and GPU computing, data integration and pipeline tools, data annotation and labelling, financial data analytics, healthcare and life sciences data, defence and security intelligence, environmental and climate data, and enterprise data visualisation.

Yes. The top 100 includes companies at every stage — from Seed-stage startups through to Established firms with over 1,000 employees.

The ranking table is automatically updated weekly using data from the Beauhurst platform.

All data is sourced from the Beauhurst platform, which tracks equity investment, company financials, and growth signals for UK companies.

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