The AI agents market has entered a rapid growth phase in 2026, fuelled by strong adoption across financial services, healthcare, retail, logistics, and customer support. Building on early momentum in 2025, the UK market is now estimated to be approaching $0.6 billion in value, supported by rising enterprise demand for autonomous systems that can handle end-to-end tasks, from workflow automation to voice-based customer interactions.
Industry analysts note that the UK now represents a significant share of Europe’s AI agents sector, driven by London’s concentration of AI talent, early-stage research hubs in Cambridge, and a regulatory environment that encourages innovation while prioritising safety and accountability.
Here are eight UK startups to watch in 2026!
Paid AI
Image credits: Paid AI
Founder/s: Manny Medina, Manoj Ganapathy, Raj Dosanjh
Founded year: 2024
Total funding: $31.3M
London-based startup Paid AI is building the infrastructure that helps companies monetise and bill autonomous AI agents, shifting away from traditional subscription and per-seat pricing to a results-based model. Its platform tracks agent activity, cost and margins in real time, and enables businesses to charge based on the value their AI agents deliver to customers, such as outcomes achieved or tasks completed, rather than mere usage. This approach aims to make AI more accountable and more aligned with how enterprises measure ROI in the age of autonomous agents.
In September 2025, the company closed an oversubscribed seed round of $21.6 million led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from FUSE and existing backer EQT Ventures. The capital will accelerate its mission to help SaaS and AI builders transition to outcome-linked billing and scale agent-centric business models.
Poly AI
Image credits: Poly AI
Founder/s: Nikola Mrkšić, Tsung-Hsien Wen (Shawn Wen), Pei-Hao Su
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: $204M
Poly AI is a London-based enterprise AI startup that builds advanced conversational voice agents designed to handle customer interactions with natural, human-like dialogue.
Its AI assistants can understand intent, manage multi-turn conversations, and complete tasks such as authentication, bookings, and payments, enabling organisations to automate complex customer service workflows in multiple languages and at scale.
PolyAI’s technology is used by more than 100 major enterprises worldwide across industries such as hospitality, logistics, financial services, and retail.
In December 2025, PolyAI raised $86 million in a Series D funding round, co-led by growth investors Georgian, Hedosophia, and Khosla Ventures, with participation from NVentures, the British Business Bank, Citi Ventures, Squarepoint Ventures, Sands Capital, Zendesk Ventures, and Point72 Ventures. This strategic capital brings the company’s total funding to over $200 million and will be used to accelerate product development, expand global go-to-market efforts, and deepen technology capabilities.
Luminance
Image credits: Luminance
Founder/s: Adam Guthrie, Dr Graham Sills
Founded year: 2015
Total funding: $138M
Developed by AI experts from the University of Cambridge, Luminance employs a specialised AI system, the “Panel of Judges,” to automate and enhance all interactions businesses have with their contracts.
The company’s approach has attracted over 700 clients across more than 70 countries, including prominent names like AMD, Hitachi, LG Chem, SiriusXM, Rolls-Royce, and Lamborghini.
Earlier last year, the legal AI pioneer Luminance raised $75 million in a Series C funding round led by Point72 Private Investments, with contributions from Forestay Capital, RPS Ventures, and Schroders Capital. Existing investors, including March Capital, National Grid Partners, and Slaughter and May, also participated.
Swap
Image credits: Swap
Founder/s: Sam Atkinson, Zach Bailet
Founded year: 2021
Total funding: $152M
Swap runs on smart AI that works on its own to streamline business: it locks in exact import costs upfront as the official importer, refunds taxes automatically on returns, predicts stock needs to avoid shortages, and offers virtual fitting rooms that lift sales by 65% and trim returns.
It stitches everything together directly inside Shopify, delivering 30% better margins and near-perfect customer stickiness, without the steep pricing or poor service found with other providers.
After closing a $40 million Series B six months ago, Swap has now raised a $100 million Series C, co-led by DST Global and ICONIQ. The company has evolved beyond its origins as a returns-focused platform, expanded into cross-border commerce, and is now building the infrastructure for AI-powered global transactions.
Mimica Automation
Image credits: Mimica Automation
Founder/s: Tuhin Chakraborty, Raphael Holca-Lamarre
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: $26.6M
Mimica Automation is a process intelligence and automation company that helps enterprises understand and optimise how work actually happens. Its AI platform uses advanced task mining to record real employee interactions, such as clicks, keystrokes, and actions, and translates them into detailed end-to-end workflow maps.
In September 2025, Mimica secured $26.2 million in a Series B funding round led by Paladin Capital Group, with continued participation from Khosla Ventures, LGVP, and Entrepreneurs First. The investment will help the company accelerate its platform development and expand its market reach, particularly in bridging the gap between enterprise AI pilots and real-world, production-ready automation.
Over the past 18 months, Mimica has achieved rapid growth and signed more than 30 large enterprise customers.
Jack & Jill AI
Image credits: Jack & Jill AI
Founder/s: Matthew Wilson, Saaras Mehan
Founded year: 2025
Total funding: $20M
London-based HRtech startup Jack and Jill AI is building autonomous conversational AI agents to transform how people find jobs and how companies hire talent. Rather than relying on job boards or manual screening, the platform deploys two distinct agents: Jack interacts with job seekers to understand their skills, goals, and preferences, while Jill works with employers to learn what they need in a candidate and surface ideal matches.
Together, these agents simulate human recruiter conversations at scale, improving candidate quality and experience while reducing time-to-hire and bias in traditional recruiting processes.
In October 2025, Jack and Jill AI secured $20 million in seed funding to accelerate product development and international expansion. The round was led by European VC Creandum, with participation from DIG Ventures, Entrepreneur First, Ada Ventures, Firedrop, Repeat.vc, Episode1, Playfair, and more than 75 angel investors, including former F1 world champion Nico Rosberg and backers connected to Anthropic and ElevenLabs.
The new capital will support scaling into the U.S. market and expanding the company’s autonomous hiring platform.
Gradient Labs
Image credits: Gradient Labs team
Founder/s: Dimitri Masin, Neal Lathia, Danai Antoniou
Founded year: 2023
Total funding: $16.7M
Gradient Labs is yet another London-based AI startup building specialised customer operations automation for regulated industries, particularly financial services. Its flagship product is an autonomous conversational AI agent designed to handle complex support tasks end-to-end, from frontline queries to back-office workflows, while adhering to strict compliance standards.
Gradient Labs’ technology helps banks and other regulated businesses scale support without sacrificing accuracy, tone, or regulatory compliance, a crucial advantage given the legal or financial risks that mistakes can carry.
In July 2025, Gradient Labs closed a $13 million Series A funding round led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from LocalGlobe, Puzzle Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Exceptional Capital. The capital will be used to expand the company’s product development, market reach, and team, enabling deeper investment in R&D and broader deployment of its AI-driven support platform in regulated sectors.
iGent AI
Image credits: iGent AI
Founder/s: Martin Szummer, Sean Ward
Founded year: 2023
Total funding: $8.3M
iGent AI is a London-based AI startup focused on transforming software development through its flagship platform, Maestro. It combines in-context learning and inference-time reasoning to help developers tackle complex engineering challenges, from modernising legacy codebases to building new solutions.
The system aims to streamline the full development lifecycle by allowing developers to focus on high-level design while Maestro handles detailed implementation and architectural decisions.
The company emerged from stealth after securing a £6.3 million seed funding round led by HV Capital, with participation from XTX Ventures, TwinPath, 10x Founders, and Dhyan. This round provides early-stage capital to accelerate product development, expand Maestro’s capabilities, and support broader adoption across engineering teams.