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Ten deep tech startups to watch in the UK

Posted 17 Apr 2023

Although global tech investment continued to decline during 2023, according to Atomico’s State of European Tech report, the UK remains a magnet for investment and is still the best place in Europe to run a startup, giving good reason for optimism about the future of UK tech.

And whilst investment might dip, startups with great products and services, a validated target market, and a clear path to profitability continue to raise successfully: the early stage companies on our list have raised a combined total of over £30 million.

From climate and carbon tech leaders to cutting-edge AI businesses, companies exploiting the latest metaverse trends to those solving critical industrial challenges, we take a look at the deep tech startups to watch in the UK.

Ten deep tech startups to watch in the UK

10 deeo tech startups to watch in the UK

1. Ai Build

With the long term effects of the pandemic still impacting the UK’s industrial companies, our latest Manufacturing Leaders Poll found that more than a quarter of UK manufacturers viewed additive manufacturing as a priority technology for 2023.

Fresh from Digital Catapult’s Net Zero Scale programme, Ai Build raised £2.56m ($3.2m) in 2022 with participation from ACT Venture Partners and existing investor SuperSeed, followed by successfully raising £6.7m ($8.5m) in Series A funding led by IQ Capital last year.

The London-based startup offers an exciting 3D manufacturing process that enables manufacturers to build prototypes much faster – and more sustainably – than using traditional methods: slow, error-prone manufacturing becomes fast, predictable and repeatable.

2. Carbon Re

Another exciting scaling business focused on addressing major challenges affecting the manufacturing industries, is climate tech and AI startup Carbon Re. Carbon Re is a female co-founded startup dedicated to tackling the gigatonnes of carbon emissions generated from the cement industry.

Buffy Price at Digital Catapult's 10 Year Anniversary Event

A spin out of Cambridge University and UCL, Carbon Re was one of the original cohort members of Digital Catapult’s Net Zero Scale programme. More recently, its interim CEO and Co-founder Buffy Price shared her thoughts on whether rapid digitalisation has become a high enough priority for UK industry at Digital Catapult’s 10 year anniversary discussion.

With its innovative “Delta Zero AI” platform that could potentially help reduce CO2 emissions by 50 kilotonnes per plant, saving around £2 million, it’s unsurprising that Carbon Re raised £4.2 million ($4.8 million) in November 2022 led by Planet A Ventures, with participation from Clean Growth Fund, UCL Technology Fund, and University of Cambridge Seed Fund.

3. Climate X

Helping organisations become more resilient to the impacts of climate change by modelling the risk, probability and severity of weather events decades before they happen, Climate X is an innovative London-based startup making waves in the cleantech space.

Climate X predicts that climate change-related risks are expected to cost the global economy up to $23tn by 2050. In March 2022, it completed a £4.1m seed funding round, led by CommerzVentures and A/O PropTech. With a pre-seed funding round of £1.1m in July 2021, Climate X has now raised £5.2m.

Part of our flagship AI programme Machine Intelligence Garage, Climate X benefited from additional compute power, access to NVIDIA DGX, AWS credits and ethics consultations to speed up their growth journey. In 2023, Climate X was also shortlisted for BusinessCloud’s EnviroTech 50 Award.

4. Extend Robotics

Digital Catapult has been working with Extend Robotics since the company was founded in 2019, and they have been part of our Augmentor accelerator programme and our West Midlands based 5G accelerator 5PRING.

A spin out of Imperial College London, the Reading-based company enables humans to operate robots using augmented and virtual reality (AR & VR) that is intuitive and ultra-precise, with potential in multiple industries from healthcare to agriculture, using off the shelf Meta/Oculus equipment.

Having previously raised £300,000 pre-seed funding, Extend Robotics were winners of the BBC’s Dragon’s Den in January 2022. In 2024, they also received a £500,000 convertible loan note (CLN) from Digital Catapult as part of a wider initiative led by Innovate UK and the Catapult Network.

Chang Liu, Extend Robotics at 5G Testbed Accelerator Programme

5. Greyparrot

Arguably one of the most successful startups Digital Catapult has worked with, Greyparrot is the leading AI waste analytics platform for the recycling industry and circular economy, providing waste recognition software to monitor and sort waste at scale to help boost recycling rates.

Greyparrot at Digital Catapult Awards 2021

The London-based, female-founded startup joined our Machine Intelligence Garage programme for companies developing artificial intelligence and machine learning products and services in 2019. The AWS credits provided by Digital Catapult were used to train Greyparrot’s first waste recognition system.

Raising £8.6m ($11m) in the summer of 2022 in a Series A funding round led by ESG-focused investors Una Terra, the funding will help Greyparrot focus on increasing its product offer, expand further afield, and continue to grow. Greyparrot has since secured £10.1m ($12.8 m) from Netherlands-based Bollegraaf Recycling Solutions and was shortlisted for BusinessCloud’s EnviroTech 50 Award. Since March 2019, Greyparrot has raised a total of $30.8 million.

6. Infyos

Infyos is helping to solve the problem of transparency for electric vehicle battery supply chains. Working right across the supply chain, the company is building a platform to improve – and go beyond – traceability and data access using blockchain technology and IoT.

A member of Digital Catapult’s Net Zero Accelerate programme, Infyos has raised £955k ($1.2m) since 2022, including undisclosed pre-seed round, and is recognised as one of the highest potential carbon tech startups in the UK right now.

7. measurable.energy

Another climate tech startup to watch for 2023, measurable.energy has built a platform that uses machine learning to eliminate wasted energy and emissions from buildings.

Winner of multiple awards, including being shortlisted for BusinessCloud’s EnviroTech 50 in 2023, and part of our Machine Intelligence Garage programme, measurable.energy raised £4.5m in Series A funding in 2023 to help continue their scaling up journey.

8. MOONHUB

One of the more prominent use cases for VR is in training. Not only does research show that more knowledge is retained from training in VR and can save organisations money, an immersive experience can replicate dangerous or inaccessible environments where training in real life can be next to impossible.

Founded in 2016, MOONHUB participated in Digital Catapult’s virtual and augmented reality accelerator programme Augmentor in 2020, and raised £2m seed investment in 2022 led by Pi Labs with participation from Ada Ventures. Since 2022, MOONHUB has raised a total of £3.5m.

It provides immersive, lifelike workplace training in VR to a diverse portfolio of clients including Just Eat, Here East in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Royal Opera House, Rawbank, and Sports Interactive.

MOONHUB made great leaps forward in 2022, securing more commercial customers, being selected for the Google for Startups Black Founders programme, and receiving a special invitation to meet Minister for Science, Research and Innovation George Freeman, to showcase the impact of their technology. Digital Catapult has run a pilot testing MOONHUB’s Diversity and Inclusion training across the Digital Catapult workforce, showing great potential for raising awareness and education.

9. Retinize

Belfast-based studio Retinize creates immersive experiences in AR and VR for major brands including Eurostar, BBC, Land Rover, Seagate and MINI. Its Animotive product is set to disrupt the 3D animation production process by allowing anyone to be an animator.

Retinize was one of the 10 startups on the fourth cohort of our Augmentor programme. Already an award winning business, the company is recognised as one of Europe’s fastest growing creative technology companies, and raised £2m in seed funding last year led by Sure Valley Ventures.

10. TOffeeX

TOffeeX provides AI driven generative design for advanced manufacturing to design fuel-efficient machinery for the aerospace industry that has reduced CO2 pollution for clients including Boeing and Rolls-Royce.

The TOffeeX cloud platform enables clients to maximise thermo-fluid and structural performance of engineering components, leading to increased efficiency, reduced waste and emissions in the manufacturing process.

A female-founded spin out from Imperial College London, in November 2022 the company raised £5m (€5.7m) to help it scale globally with a particular focus on the US and Asian markets. The Series A round was led by Presidio Ventures Europe and East Innovate, IQ Capital, who led ToffeeX’s seed round, also participated.

The markets for additive manufacturing and computer aided design are both predicted to increase by over 30% by 2028 so we expect to see increased demand for solutions like the TOffeeX platform.

This article was released in January 2023 and edited in April 2024.