Sifted created a selection of the most promising tech startups across Europe, based on the amount of capital they raised, their hiring tempo and how formative they have been to the startup ecosystems around them. AIN.TECH publishes the list of UK companies to watch in 2020.
Founded: In 2011 by Jason Austin and Lex Greensill
Valuation: €3.18B
Greensill is the provider of Supply Chain Finance for businesses and people across Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa and Asia. The company is headquartered in London with offices in New York, Chicago, Miami, Frankfurt, Bremen, and Sydney, with more than 800 specialists worldwide.
Founded: In 2012 by Greg Orlowski and William Shu
Valuation: €1.82B
Deliveroo owns and operates an online food delivery platform in the United Kingdom. Its platform uses “Frank’ machine learning algorithm based on predictive technology that evaluates the most efficient way of distributing orders based on the location of restaurants, riders and customers.
Founded: In 2105 by Joel Perlman and Rishi Khosla
Valuation: €2.5B
OakNorth develops a credit platform that leverages big data and machine learning to help banks around the world improve their lending to lower mid-market businesses. Through 360-degree monitoring of borrowers’ financial and operational information, its solution allows avoiding any negative credit issues and creating a better borrowing experience.
Founded: In 2013 by Ali Parsa
Valuation: €1.82B
Babylon Health is a digital health service provider that combines AI technology with the medical expertise of humans. Babylon delivers full access to healthcare, including personalized health assessments, treatment advice, and face-to-face appointments with a doctor 24/7.
Founded: In 2012 byHerman Narula, Peter Lipka, and Rob Whitehead
Valuation: €1.8B
Improbable is a software company that creates a cloud-based computation platform SpatialOS for game developers to create AI-powered simulations and virtual worlds for use in video games and corporate simulations.
Founded: In 2014 by Anthony Thomson, David McCarthy, and Mark Mullen
Valuation: €550M
Durham-based Atom Bank is a challenger bank that offers a range of personal and business banking through its mobile banking application. It offers savings, as well as loans and mortgages to its clients.
Founded: In 2015 by Gary Dolman, Jason Bates, Jonas Huckestein, Paul Rippon, and Tom Blomfield
Valuation: €2.4B
Monzo is a millennial-friendly mobile-only neobank. The banking startup was launched with a prepaid card only, but now offers current accounts, savings and lending, claiming that more than 3.6 million people now use its cards around the world.
Founded: In 2011 by Kristo Kaarmann and Taavet Hinrikus
Valuation: €3.18B
TransferWise provides a core money transfer platform for its audience of expats, freelancers, and travellers. The company is famous thanks to its “clever model” that means it doesn’t actually move money across borders, which would incur fees, instead of maintaining separate pots for each currency, which it then disburses funds from.
Founded: In 2014 by Anne Boden
Valuation: €540M
Starling Bank provides a mobile banking application and a debit card that enable users to manage their finances. It offers four different account types – personal, business, joint and euro, plus a child card. Starling has already opened more than 1.8 million customer accounts with over £3.6 billion in deposits.
Founded: In 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko
Valuation: €4.55B
Revolut is a digital finance platform offering banking, currency exchange, cryptocurrency and stockbroking services. Led by Nikolay Storonsky, the company has around 6 million customers, up from 1.5 million a year ago, and is adding around 16,000 accounts a day.
Founded: In 2016 by Nigel Toon and Simon Knowles
Valuation: €1.55B
Graphcore is a hardware systems company developing IPU-Accelerator cards and IPU-Appliance products that will accelerate machine learning applications. The company’s ambition is to become the Arm or Intel of the new generation of AI chips — i.e. providing the design architecture and being part of every chip made.
Founded: In 2013 by Brent Gutekunst, Ivan Griffin, Ken Mulvany, and Michael Brennan
Valuation: €1.82B
BenevolentAI wants to use artificial intelligence to transform the way medicines are discovered and brought to market. It has built a platform that is designed to sift through large volumes of medical data, for example, clinical trials and academic papers, and make it faster to develop new drugs.
Founded: In 2013 by Dave Palmer, Emily Orton, Jack Stockdale, Nicole Eagan, and Poppy Gustafsson
Valuation: €1.5B
Darktrace is a UK cybersecurity company using artificial intelligence to detect viruses and cyber threats inside a computer network. According to the company, their system is “modelled on the human immune system” and uses “self-learning cyber AI technology that detects novel attacks and insider threats at an early stage”.
Founded: In 2012 by Guillaume Pousaz
Valuation: €1.82
Checkout.com provides fintech companies with a cross-border payment solution for digital commerce. The business offers direct access to domestic acquiring across payment methods and geographies, including all major credit and debit cards, online banking, PayPal, Apple Pay and other eWallets.
Founded: In 2011 by Hiroki Takeuchi and Matt Robinson
Valuation: €273-€409M
GoCardless develops a global payments network and technology platform that takes the pain out of getting paid for businesses with recurring revenue. More than 40,000 businesses worldwide, from multinational corporations to SMBs, transact through GoCardless each month. The company has four offices: the UK, France, Australia and Germany.
Founded: In 2011 by Kris Naudts
Valuation: €291-€436M
Culture Trip is a global tech startup that inspires people to explore the world’s culture and creativity through technology and a global network of local content creators. With offices in London, NYC and Tel Aviv and a global hub of editorial contributors hailing from all over the world, the company gains 15 million visitors a month.
Founded: In 2014 by Amit Gudka and Hayden Wood
Valuation: €378M
Bulb is a renewable energy retailer, supplying affordable renewable electricity from solar, wind and hydro and carbon-neutral gas to customers’ homes. Currently, over 1,3 million customers already use the company’s services.
Founded: In 2011 by
Valuation: €145-€218M
Citymapper is a public transit app and mapping service which displays transport options, usually with live timing, between any two locations in a supported city. It integrates data for all urban modes of transport, including walking, cycling and driving, in addition to public transport in over than 50 cities worldwide.
Founded: In 2011 by Daniel Klein, Jan Deepen, Marc-Alexander Christ, Petter Made, and Stefan Jeschonnek
Valuation: €1B
SumUp is a financial technology company that develops contactless card readers which process payments with a smartphone or tablet through point-of-sale (POS) apps. SumUp has successfully expanded into 31 markets and has over 1 million customers.
Founded: In 2018 by Alexander Edward Chesterman
Valuation: €116-€175M
Cazoo is a developer of an online used car marketplace designed to transform the way people buy, finance, or rent used cars. The platform enables customers to purchase a used car online and have it delivered to their door and provides a free 90-day warranty and roadside assistance.
