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Barclays has named AI chip startup Fractile and Google DeepMind spinout Isomorphic Labs among Britain’s top AI companies as investors race to back the next generation of UK tech champions.
The banking giant’s Eagle Labs division unveiled its new AI 100 ranking this week, spotlighting the country’s fastest-growing AI businesses amid a record year for investment into the sector.
The list comes as Britain’s AI industry cements its position as one of Europe’s hottest investment markets, with UK AI firms attracting £8.3bn in funding during 2025.
Many of the companies featured are already pulling in heavyweight global investors as competition intensifies around the infrastructure powering artificial intelligence.
Oxford-founded Fractile this week secured a $220m (£165m) funding round backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Accel and Factorial Funds as it attempts to develop faster, cheaper AI inference chips.
The startup, founded in 2022 by Oxford researcher Walter Goodwin, is betting that the next major challenge in AI will not simply be building smarter models, but making them commercially viable to run at scale.
Meanwhile London-based Isomorphic Labs recently raised $2.1bn to accelerate its AI-driven drug discovery platform, one of the largest AI funding rounds seen in Europe this year.
The company, which was spun out of Google DeepMind in 2021, is using AI to speed up the development of new medicines as pharmaceutical companies increasingly turn to AI to cut costs and shorten research timelines.
AI boom faces growing scrutiny over investment claims
The publication of Barclays’ ranking comes as Britain’s wider AI investment boom faces increasing scrutiny.
A recent Guardian investigation questioned several high-profile AI investment announcements promoted by ministers as part of the government’s push to “mainline AI into the veins” of the economy.
The report raised concerns over whether some headline-grabbing AI infrastructure pledges – including datacentre investments linked to Nvidia-backed firms Nscale and CoreWeave – had been overstated.
Some projects promoted as major new datacentre developments were in reality expansions inside existing facilities rather than entirely new sites.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) rejected the claims but acknowledged it was “not playing an active role in auditing these commitments”.
The debate reflects growing pressure on governments globally to demonstrate that the huge sums attached to AI announcements are translating into genuine economic growth, jobs and infrastructure.
