Belfast AI firm Whitespace has raised £10 million in Series A funding.
The round brings in new institutional investment from Beach Equity and White Cloud, together with earlier backing secured during its pre-Series-A phase.
Whitespace will look to scale strategically to meet growing demand across defence, national security, and other high-assurance regulated sectors.
Founded in 2015 by Paul Jenkinson and Andrew McCartney, Whitespace began as a small team of engineers and designers building bespoke AI capabilities for defence and enterprise clients.
Ten years on, it has evolved into one of the UK’s leading innovators in sovereign AI – delivering technology that now underpins some of the nation’s most complex and high-risk operations.
At the heart of this expansion is Collective, Whitespace’s flagship sovereign AI platform, developed entirely in the UK and already deployed across critical live environments. Designed for settings where security, trust, and control are essential, Collective enables organisations to build, deploy, govern, and scale AI safely across cloud, edge, on-premise, and fully air-gapped systems.
“This raise gives us the capacity to deliver sovereign AI capability at national scale – building technology that the UK can trust, control and deploy safely across its most critical systems,” said Paul Jenkinson, CEO.
“Sovereignty isn’t a slogan; it’s an infrastructure choice, and this investment allows us to move faster on that mission.”
Tommy O’Sullivan, managing partner, Beach Equity, said: “We are incredibly excited to be partnering with Whitespace.
“The traction they have achieved, on both sides of the Atlantic, is a testament to their market-leading knowledge and product design, which is allowing them to set down the pathway for how AI is being used in highly regulated sectors.
“It is rare to see a small business command such respect from its Big Tech partners.’’
Paul Skipworth, White Cloud’s incoming Board Director, said: “Defence and linked regulated organisations are facing unprecedented challenges requiring the rapid development of AI solutions that work in challenging environments. All this has created a huge opportunity for agile UK-based defence AI companies such as Whitespace.
“It is a privilege for us to support and work with the world-class Whitespace team as the company scales to serve its sovereign UK and international clients.”
Jenkinson added: “We started as a small team of problem-solvers in Belfast who believed that the UK should own its own AI infrastructure. Ten years later, that belief has become reality – our capabilities are now live, and this investment takes us from pioneering to scaling.”
Tom Winnifrith v Amazing AI plc: Bizarre dispute heads towards legal action