Here are five British tech startups to look out for
A new cohort of Future Fifty tech firms is demonstrating exponential growth and attracting significant investment, reinforcing London’s position as a hub for dynamic scale-ups in this space.
These companies are making headlines across diverse sectors, from AI to environmental technology.
The talent is emerging from UK universities, but the challenge for these firms is to harness this potential and secure the long-term support needed to compete on a global stage.
As Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, told CityAM: “The UK is a hub for innovation, but the lack of access to easy capital and the risk-averse attitude of investors can make the environment more difficult.”
Here are five of the most compelling home-grown tech firms to watch.
ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs is becoming a “blueprint for the new wave of European unicorns,” according to Payton Dobbs, partner at Hoxton Ventures.
The company, founded by academics from Imperial, Oxford and Cambridge, raised $180m (£132m) in a Series C round in January 2025, tripling its valuation to $3.3bn. The funding was co-led by a16z and ICONIQ Growth.
The firm’s success is built on its AI audio platform, which a spokesperson notes is being used by over a thousand enterprise clients and millions of creators.
Its products range from AI voice cloning to multilingual dubbing, and the company recently launched Eleven Music, a tool that allows users to create studio-grade music from simple text prompts.
Yet this move enters a competitive and legally fraught market, with other AI music firms across the pond facing lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
In response to these concerns, ElevenLabs has announced licensing deals with digital publishing platforms Merlin Network and Kobalt Music Group, whose representative noted that artists voluntarily opt-in to have their music used for AI training.
Looking ahead, a company spokesperson told CityAM that ElevenLabs sees “voice becoming the primary interface for AI,” with a focus on building AI agents that can see, hear, and act.
They add that the company’s move to New York and its ability to secure backing from top-tier US investors is a “formula that’s working” for scaling in the competitive tech landscape.
Abound fintech
Abound is a fintech firm with a clear mission to modernise lending through AI-powered credit decisioning.
Its financial results for the year to February 2025 demonstrate a remarkable ascent, with revenue hitting £68.5m, up from £27.1m the previous year. This growth led to a net profit of £7.5m
The company’s success is fuelled by its ‘Render’ platform, which uses open banking insights to offer lower rates to consumers while minimising default rates.
A spokesperson for Abound, Sam Power, credited the UK’s open banking framework as a key enabler for the firm’s inception and subsequent growth.
“We could only have started Abound in the UK,” Power told CityAM, adding that the firm is now “primed to follow open banking around the world as other countries follow suit.”
The company secured a £500m Series B funding round in January 2024, and in March 2025, it secured a £250m debt facility from Deutsche Bank, bringing its total lending capacity to £1.6bn.
NatureMetrics
NatureMetrics is a company tackling the pressing challenges of monitoring biodiversity.
The firm, which uses environmental DNA (eDNA) to track species and assess ecosystem health, has seen significant backing, including a $25m Series B funding round in January 2025.
This round was the first investment for the Al Gore-backed Just Climate and the Monaco ReOcean Fund, making it the largest ever closed for a biodiversity firm.
Dimple Patel, NatureMetrics boss, highlighted the significance of the funding, which was announced on the NYC Nasdaq Tower, as well as being named a finalist for the Earthshot Prize.
Patel also noted that the company is “continuing to drive innovation into nature monitoring, particularly those powered by AI and machine learning”.
The firm’s ‘Nature Intelligence Platform’ is already supporting more than 600 clients in over 110 countries, helping major corporations like Unilever and Tesco manage their environmental risks and navigate regulatory demands.
According to chief scientific officer Juliet Jones, “addressing nature risk isn’t just about compliance – it’s about building resilience into your business”.
Hexarad
Hexarad is a platform born from the front lines of the NHS, developed by consultant radiologists who witnessed the daily struggles of growing backlogs and delayed diagnoses.
The company’s AI-enabled tele-radiology platform is designed to streamline the allocation and reporting of scans, helping to tackle the operational issues that plague the healthcare system.
Co-founder Farzana Rahman recounted the early struggles of finding investment, with many investors questioning whether the problem was “big enough to matter”.
The experience of her friend’s father, who waited weeks for cancer scan results, was a key motivator for the company’s founding.
Rahman emphasises that the real challenge in healthcare is not just technology adoption, but also “logistics, timing, and workflow.”
After securing its first investment in 2021, Hexarad has grown rapidly and has now supported diagnoses for over two million NHS patients.
The firm raised £11m in August 2024 to expand its platform further, demonstrating that practical innovation can make a real difference in healthcare.
“With NHS waits at record highs, we tackle the problem from all sides, getting scans reported swiftly, streamlining workflow and improving efficiency sustainably”, Hexarad’s Dr Jaymin Patel told CityAM.
Tembo Money
Tembo Money is a fintech firm focused on making mortgages and savings more accessible, particularly for millennials.
The company has shown impressive growth, with revenue reaching £6.4m by the end of 2024, a dramatic jump from just £815,000 two years prior.
This rapid expansion was fuelled by a £14m Series B funding round in November 2024.
Tembo’s strategy includes leveraging its digital platform to offer competitive savings products.
The firm recently launched a one-year fixed-rate cash ISA offering a “best-buy rate” of 4.27 per cent, which was a response to customer demand for fixed-rate products as interest rates begin to trend downwards.
The new product, offered through the investing platform Investec, requires a minimum deposit of £500 and is the latest addition to Tembo’s growing range of financial services.
Tembo was approached by CityAM for comment but has not yet responded..