The UK’s deep tech ecosystem is no longer emerging, in fact, it’s scaling. In 2025, the sector raised $5.9 billion, making it the second-best funding year on record, according to the report. Today, privately held UK deep tech companies are worth $155 billion, and $406 billion when exits and public markets are included.
With more than 50 companies now valued at $1 billion or more or generating $100 million+ in revenue, the UK has built a deep tech engine capable of tackling problems at global scale.
Each month, Tech Funding News (TFN), in collaboration with London-based university spinout specialist Parkwalk, curates a list spotlighting the UK’s most compelling technology companies. In December 2025, we highlighted Britain’s most exciting mobility innovators and this time, we’re turning our focus to deep tech, showcasing the startups pushing the boundaries of science, engineering, and innovation.
Here are 10 UK-based deep tech startups leading that charge.
Quantum Motion Technologies
Founded year: 2017
Founder/s: John Morton and Simon Benjamin
HQ: London
Founded by Professor John Morton at UCL and Professor Simon Benjamin at Oxford University, Quantum Motion is developing silicon-based quantum processors designed to operate reliably at real-world scale by leveraging industry-standard semiconductor manufacturing techniques.
The company’s core innovation lies in its scalable tile architecture, which integrates quantum compute, readout, and control elements directly onto silicon chips using complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) processes.
In September 2025, the company delivered the industry’s first full-stack quantum computer, built entirely on standard CMOS silicon, and installed it at the UK National Quantum Computing Centre under the Testbed Programme.
In February 2023, the company raised over £42 million in an oversubscribed Series B funding round led by Bosch Ventures, with participation from Porsche Automobil Holding SE and British Patient Capital, as well as support from existing investors including Oxford Science Enterprises, Parkwalk, Octopus Ventures, IP Group, and NSSIF.
Phasecraft
Founded year: 2018
Founder/s: Ashley Montanaro, Toby Cubit, and John Morton
HQ: London
Phasecraft, a London-based quantum algorithms specialist, is bridging the gap between quantum computing theory and real-world industrial application by designing ultra-efficient algorithms for today’s noisy, imperfect quantum hardware.
Founded by three leading quantum scientists, Professors Toby Cubitt and John Morton from UCL’s Quantum Science and Technology Institute, and Professor Ashley Montanaro from the University of Bristol, Phasecraft emerged from decades of cutting-edge academic research into quantum information theory and algorithm design.
The company’s breakthrough approach focuses on minimising quantum circuit depth and error rates, enabling practical solutions to previously intractable problems in material science, chemistry, and energy optimisation without requiring perfect quantum hardware.
Last year, a Bristol-based Phasecraft raised $34M in Series B funding to advance quantum computing applications. The round was co-led by Plural, Playground Global, and Novo Holdings’ Quantum Fund, with participation from LocalGlobe, AlbionVC, and early backer Parkwalk, underscoring continued investor confidence in its approach.
Oxford Quantum Circuits
Founded year: 2017
Founder/s: Dr Peter Leek
HQ: Reading
Founded by Dr Peter Leek, a Research Fellow in condensed matter physics at the University of Oxford, Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) emerged in 2017 as a spin-out to commercialise groundbreaking research in superconducting quantum circuits. The company’s Coaxmon architecture, a 3D packaging technology, addresses quantum computing’s fundamental scalability challenge: maintaining qubit quality and coherence while multiplying processor capacity to reach commercially viable system sizes.
Their application-optimised compute empowers customers in finance, security, and defence to solve previously intractable problems, reshaping industries and strengthening sovereign advantage.
The company raised its last funding of around $100 million in 2024 as part of a Series B funding round led by Japanese VC fund SBI Investment. Earlier, in 2017, Parkwalk backed OQC through its Parkwalk Opportunities Fund, participating in the company’s $2.7 million seed round alongside other early investors.
Nu Quantum
Founded year: 2018
Founder/s: Dr. Carmen Palacios-Berraquero
HQ: Cambridge
Nu Quantum, a Cambridge-based quantum computing infrastructure company founded in 2018 by Dr Carmen Palacios-Berraquero, develops photonic quantum networking hardware designed to enable scalable, distributed quantum computing systems.
The startup builds the foundational networking infrastructure needed to interconnect quantum processors and enable more powerful, fault-tolerant quantum computers. The company’s core technology, the Entanglement Fabric, is a modular, interoperable quantum networking layer that creates high-fidelity entanglement links between qubits across multiple processors using photonic quantum networking.
In December 2025, Nu Quantum closed an oversubscribed $60 million Series A funding round led by National Grid Partners, with participation from Gresham House Ventures and Morpheus Ventures, as well as support from existing investors Amadeus Capital Partners, IQ Capital, and others, including Parkwalk as well.
Riverlane
Founded year: 2016
Founder/s: Dr Steve Brierley (Founder & CEO)
HQ: Cambridge, UK (with offices in Boston and San Francisco)
Founded in 2016 by Dr Steve Brierley (a 20+ year quantum computing veteran, former Senior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and OBE recipient in 2024), Riverlane emerged from a simple yet profound realisation: quantum computing faces a scaling bottleneck in error correction.
Riverlane’s core product, Deltaflow, is a complete quantum error correction stack comprising proprietary QEC semiconductor chips, custom FPGA-implemented hardware, and specialised software that continuously monitors quantum processor health, detects errors in real-time, and implements corrections with ultra-low latency.
Riverlane’s technology breakthroughs have translated directly into deployment at the world’s most demanding installations. In September 2025, Riverlane announced the deployment of Deltaflow 2 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee.
Since 2016, Riverlane has raised over $110 million across funding rounds, with Parkwalk, Planet First Partners, EDBI and ETF Partners being early backers.
Improbable
Founded year: 2012
Founder/s: Herman Narula and Peter Lipka
HQ: London
Founded by Herman Narula, alongside Imperial College-educated developer Peter Lipka, Improbable emerged from a 2012 vision to transcend the technical limitations constraining online multiplayer experiences: the inability of single-server architectures to support thousands of concurrent players interacting in rich, persistent environments.
The UK company leverages its skills in gaming, blockchain, and artificial intelligence to develop unique metaverse experiences for brands, facilitating entertainment, social interaction, and business opportunities.
Watch our full interview with Peter Lipka here!
Following early backing from Andreessen Horowitz and SoftBank, the company achieved operational profitability in 2023 after years of strategic losses. In October 2022, the company closed a $112 million funding round led by the blockchain platform Elrond, valuing the company at $3.4 billion.
Synthesia
Founded year: 2017
Founder/s: Steffen Tjerrild, Prof. Lourdes Agapito, Prof. Matthias Niessner, and Victor Riparbelli
HQ: London
Founded by Victor Riparbelli, alongside professors Lourdes Agapito (UCL), Matthias Niessner (Technical University of Munich), and Steffen Tjerrild (engineer and entrepreneur), Synthesia emerged from a 2017 vision to eliminate the bottleneck of traditional video production: hiring studios, presenters, post-production crews, and managing complex asset management for global rollouts.
Synthesia’s technology stack combines proprietary large language models, photorealistic avatar synthesis, and real-time voice generation across 140+ languages and 230+ AI presenters. The platform’s ease of use mirrors PowerPoint: business users compose scripts or text, select AI avatars, and generate broadcast-quality videos in minutes, eliminating traditional production workflows.
In October 2025, the company raised $200 million from Google Ventures (GV).
Isomorphic Labs
Founded year: 2021
Founder/s: Sir Demis Hassabis
HQ: London
Founded in November 2021 by Demis Hassabis, the Nobel Prize-winning AI pioneer and CEO of Alphabet’s Google DeepMind division, Isomorphic Labs emerged from a simple insight: AlphaFold, the deep learning model that solved a 50-year-old protein-folding problem in 2020, represents not an end-state achievement but a foundation for computational drug design.
Isomorphic’s technology foundation combines AlphaFold 3 (released May 2024 in partnership with Google DeepMind) with proprietary generative AI models designed specifically for drug design. Unlike AlphaFold 2, which predicted protein structures alone, AlphaFold 3 predicts the three-dimensional structure and molecular interactions of proteins, DNA, RNA, ligands, and antibodies.
In March 2025, Isomorphic Labs secured $600 million in funding, led by Thrive Capital, with participation from GV (Google Ventures), and follow-on capital from existing investor Alphabet.
PhysicsX
Founded year: 2019
Founder/s: Dr. Robin Tuluie and Jacomo Corbo
HQ: London
Founded by Robin Tuluie and Jacomo Corbo, PhysicsX builds Large Physics Models (LPMs), specialised neural networks trained on billions of high-fidelity physics simulations.
The company’s platform combines AI-driven multiphysics inference with classical numerical solvers in a hybrid orchestration layer, enabling engineers to simulate thousands of design variations in minutes, not weeks
The company partners with leading organisations in aerospace & defence, automotive, semiconductors, materials, and energy & renewables, supporting them on some of their most critical and complex challenges.
In November 2025, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm) invested an additional $20 million, extending the Series B to $155 million and valuing PhysicsX at approximately $1 billion.
PolyAI
Founded year: 2017
Founder/s: Nikola Mrkšić, Shawn Wen, and Eddy Su
HQ: London
Founded by Nikola Mrkšić (former principal engineer at Apple working on Siri voice technology), Shawn Wen (previously at Google), and Eddy Su (formerly at Facebook), PolyAI emerged in 2017 from deep scientific work on spoken dialogue systems and machine learning-driven language understanding.
The company’s core technical differentiation, pre-trained ConveRT models and custom speech recognition engines, encodes understanding of how real customers speak: using slang, interrupting, asking tangential questions, and rarely conforming to keyword scripts.
To deliver these voice-first experiences across multiple channels, PolyAI employs state-of-the-art spoken-language technologies, speech synthesis, and a mix of retrieval and generative AI models.
The company raised $86 million co-led by Georgian, Hedosophia, and Khosla Ventures, with participation from NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture arm), British Business Bank (£15 million), Citi Ventures, Squarepoint Ventures, Sands Capital, Zendesk Ventures, and Point72 Ventures.
Latent Labs
Founded year: 2023
Founder/s: Simon Kohl
HQ: London
Founded by Dr Simon Kohl, the company represents a strategic pivot from DeepMind’s focus on protein prediction to generative de novo protein and molecule design.
The company’s core platform, LatentX, generates entirely novel protein sequences and simultaneous 3D atomic structures by learning the statistical language of natural proteins and then extrapolating beyond the space of naturally occurring sequences. LatentX achieves 91–100% hit rates for macrocycle design (complex ring-structured molecules targeting intractable disease targets) and 10–64% hit rates for mini-binder design.
In February 2025, Latent Labs emerged from stealth with $50 million in total funding, including $10 million in pre-seed capital and a $40 million Series A co-led by Radical Ventures and Sofinnova Partners.
This article is part of our editorial partnership with Parkwalk, leading UK investors focused on university spinouts and deep tech innovation.
