Five companies from Oxfordshire are among 32 companies joining Tech Nation’s AI (Artificial Intelligence) Growth Programme.
Now in its second year, the AI programme is designed to champion and support the UK’s leading AI scaleups through peer-to-peer learning and mentoring sessions. Companies who deal with artificial intelligence encounter many of the same, niche scaling challenges, and coming together to overcome them and learn from each other is key to the success and advancement of AI tech in the UK.
The UK AI landscape
The 32 companies joining the Applied AI programme represent some of the best AI scaleups in the UK, having gone through a competitive and rigorous judging process. The programme will support companies to scale up and become the AI unicorns of the future.
AI is already a strategic strength to the UK economy, with 1,344 AI companies and several well-known and established AI unicorns, including Darktrace, Benevolent AI and Graphcore.
New data (from Tech Nation, Pitchbook, 2020) shows that the UK is currently third in the world for VC investment into AI, having raised $1.48bn in 2020, after the US ($17.94)and China ($9.54bn), and leads in Europe.
The five Oxfordshire companies joining Tech Nation’s AI (Artificial Intelligence) Growth Programme are:
Archangel Imaging, Didcot – Enterprise Software
Archangel Imaging uses AI at the edge and human-machine teaming to solve global problems like protecting people, animals and infrastructure. They have built AI-enabled cameras which operate in challenging environments and a human-machine teaming platform called Cerebella. Cerebella integrates smart cameras and other sensors to detect anomalies, allowing drone, robotic or human staff to respond in real-time.
Arctoris, Oxford – Healthcare
Arctoris generate drug discovery data on demand for pharmaceutical corporations, biotech companies, and academic centres globally. They provide remote access to a wide range of drug discovery experiments which they conduct on their robotic platform, enabling partners and clients to rapidly, accurately and cost-effectively perform research and advance drug discovery programmes, creating a convincing solution for fast, reliable and fully compliant research.
Caristo, Oxford – Healthcare
Predicting heart attacks years before they happen, Caristo is disrupting diagnosis and treatment of coronary heart disease. This bold claim is supported by a solid science platform, with a string of groundbreaking publications in top-tier scientific journals. Caristo’s vision is to be the predominant clinical AI provider in diagnostic imaging, with a plan to tackle major disease areas like diabetes and stroke.
ILOF, Oxford – Healthcare
Creating an AI-powered digital library of disease biomarkers – and helping to find Alzheimer’s cure, ILoF is enabling a new era of personalized medicine by using AI and photonics. They leverage machine learning to drastically reduce the cost and time of drug discovery, and provide screening and stratification tools in an affordable, fast and portable way.
Optellum, Oxford – Healthcare
Beating lung cancer with AI, Oxford-based Optellum helps clinicians identify, diagnose and track at-risk patients in the early, hence curable stages. Optellum developed the world’s first AI-based Decision Support platform to manage these patients, validated in studies led by lung cancer guidelines authors.
Harry Rhys Davies, AI Programme Lead, Tech Nation commented: “The UK must take every opportunity to nurture scalable, globally-competitive, homegrown AI companies that solve real problems and have far-reaching impacts on the productivity potential of the economy.
Set up in 2010 and 80% funded by the UK government, Tech Nation is a growth platform for tech companies and leaders on a mission to unlock the growth potential of 1000 scaling tech leadership teams across the UK by 2022 by creating a national network connecting game-changing founders, leaders and scaling companies across the UK.
“The Applied AI growth programme aims to do exactly this, taking 32 of the UK’s most exciting AI scaleups, and through peer-to-peer learning and mentoring removing many of the unique barriers to growth that companies in this sector face. Backed by leading VCs and led by an exceptionally talented group of founders, this cohort of companies is primed to make an impact.”
