AI companies in the UK raised $9.6bn (£7.2bn) in H1 2026, up 360 per cent from H1 2025 and 284 per cent from H2 2025, while the number of funding rounds remained at 69.
The UK’s top five funded companies alone raised $8.1bn (£6.1bn) in H1 2026 – 84 per cent of the half-year total.
Isomorphic Labs ($2.1bn in a Series B), Nscale ($2bn in a Series C) and Wayve ($1.2bn in a Series D) together raised $5.3bn (£4bn) during the period.
The figures have been produced in a new report by Tracxn Technologies, a leading data intelligence platform, and cover all equity funding, exits and unicorn activity across the region’s technology ecosystem for the six months to June 30, 2026.
Funding increased across all stages, reaching $1.2bn at Seed, $4.6bn at Early Stage and $3.8bn at Late Stage.
AI infrastructure was the highest-funded sector at $5.4bn, followed by high-performance computing ($3.7bn) and life sciences tech ($2.1bn).
Odyssey, a world model AI startup founded by Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke, became a unicorn following its $310m Series B, led by Natural Capital, with participation from Amazon, GV, AMB Ventures, IQT and others.
Ineffable Intelligence, led by David Silver, a professor at University College London, reached unicorn status after raising a record $1.1bn in its Seed round in April.
FluidStack also raised $842m and $830m across two separate Series A rounds during H1 2026.
Y Combinator, Entrepreneur First and 20VC Fund were the most active Seed investors in H1 2026; Index Ventures, Octopus Ventures and Google Ventures led Early Stage investments; while SoftBank Vision Fund, Eclipse and Atomico were the most active Late Stage investors.
London accounted for 98 per cent ($9.4bn) of all UK AI funding in H1 2026, compared with 93 per cent ($2.3bn) in H2 2025.
Oxford ranked second with $103m, followed by Cambridge ($18.3m), Edinburgh ($16.1m) and Milton Keynes ($12m).
The UK recorded six acquisitions in H1 2026, compared with six in H1 2025.
Key transactions included TrueFoundry’s acquisition of Seldon, Coupa’s acquisition of Rossum, Cpgrp’s acquisition of Recycleye, Radiant’s acquisition of Ori and Keyloop’s acquisition of Motortech.
Companies acquired in H1 2026 had raised an average of $69.8m prior to acquisition, compared with $52m in H1 2025, while the average time from first funding to acquisition increased from 6.3 years to 7.9 years.