Funding for UK AI companies in the first half of 2026 reached an enormous $9.6bn (£7.1bn), representing a major increase compared with the year before, according to new data.
In the new UK AI – H1 2026 Report from Tracxn Technologies, funding for British AI firms was up 360% from the same period in 2025 and 284% from the second half of last year.
This massive increase came despite the total number of rounds dipping below the 74 tracked in the first half of last year and remaining unchanged from the second half of last year with 69 deals tracked.
There was considerable concentration found over the period, with the UK’s top five most funded AI companies accounting for 84% of the total amount raised. These include Isomorphic Labs, Nscale and Wayve, which together raised $5.3bn.
The research also found that funding has become extremely concentrated in London, which accounted for 98% of the total figure, making the UK capital even more dominant in the field than in H2 2025, when it accounted for 93% of the funding raised.
In a distant second was Oxford, with firms in the city raising $103m, followed by Cambridge with $18.3m, Edinburgh with $16.1m and Milton Keynes with $12m.
