The writer is co-founder of BlankPage Capital, co-founder of Graphcore and author of ‘How AI Thinks’
It was a small company based in London that started the race to build the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence. DeepMind, founded in 2010, pioneered deep-learning AI and is working towards human-level AI. But its acquisition by Google in 2014 means that the company’s breakthroughs are largely benefiting the US, not the UK. As the AI race intensifies, the UK needs to find a way to build its own large-scale tech companies.
The usual conversation is about ways that the country can bridge the funding gap and encourage innovation. But this is not where the problem lies. The UK is world class at creating technology companies, often via spinouts from our universities. In 2023, according to figures provided by database company Dealroom to investor Phoenix Court, Bay Area seed and early-stage companies (those raising between $1mn and $15mn in funding) raised $4.5bn. The equivalent companies in the UK raised $4.1bn. So the UK is not far behind at the earliest start-up stage. This first link in our innovation ecosystem is not broken.
Yet by the final start-up stage, where these companies need to raise $100mn or more in funding to drive growth, US businesses are way ahead, raising five times as much as their UK counterparts. What is it that goes wrong in between?
