What makes a successful AI scale-up?

Barclays Eagle Labs has produced a report profiling the UK's top 100 AI scale-ups, with advice for founders who'd like to emulate them.

"The UK has no shortage of world-class AI innovation – the real challenge is helping the strongest businesses turn that innovation into long-term, scalable growth," said Abdul Qureshi, head of Barclays Business Banking.

"This report shines a light on the companies already doing that, while also highlighting the ecosystem support needed to help more founders make the leap from promising startups to global scale-up success stories."

The firm's The Ones to Watch: AI 100 Report found that investment reached a record £8.3 billion in 2025, the highest ever recorded value. At the end of the year, said the researchers, the UK AI ecosystem was in its strongest position ever, with established companies securing record deals and the largest-ever pipeline of first-time fundraisers.

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The researchers concluded that London is still the UK's main AI hub, home to 74.1% of the UK's AI fintech companies. However, regional clusters are maturing rapidly.

The North West, for example, has seen the number of active AI companies growing 2.41 times since 2019 – more than London's 2.13. The AI companies here are working mainly in the UK's modern industrial strategy (IS8) professional and business services industry.

In Scotland, meanwhile, AI companies have grown 1.81 times since 2019, with professional and business services again a leading sector, and the Midlands is building on its automotive and engineering base.

With 59 SaaS companies appearing in the list, this sector, along with data provision and analysis, is roughly three times the size of the next-largest AI industry, robotics and automation.

The report has advice for founders wanting to scale up. At accountancy firm Cooper Parry (CP), Tom Watts and Asif Ahmed advise founders to think about the enterprise sales cycle early, keep an eye on international opportunities from the outset, and play to the UK's strengths.

Meanwhile, Mike Jones, founder of talent acquisition firm Emerald, advises getting the early hires right, keeping talent density high, and being deliberate about culture from day one. "Your early hires set the bar as you scale," he said.

And Preetham Peddanagari, a partner and UK & Ireland chief technology officer at EY, said founders should build for pain, not for applause. "The best AI companies are not the ones with the cleverest demos. They're the ones solving expensive, repetitive, high-friction problems inside real workflows," he said. They should design for trust from day one, and think internationally earlier than feels comfortable.

"The hundred companies in this report are not experimenting with a novel technology. They are building what comes next, and capital is following for rational reasons," said Mark Zanoli, Barclays' global chairman of investment banking.

"AI is already moving from experimentation into practical adoption, and this report provides an evidence-based view of where value is forming."

Alongside the AI 100 report, Barclays Eagle Labs has also announced the launch of the Scale up Consortium, a collaboration uniting founders with industry leaders to help high-growth UK companies scale.