Government Launches £500m Sovereign AI Fund as 18 Startups Land £150m | UK Weekly

Last week, two new funds brought £580m of fresh capital to deploy, and 18 startups announced £156m in venture funding.

Apr 20, 2026

The big ones

Going the extra mile Wayve unlocked £44m Series D extension from VC investors to advance fully driverless tech platform
Battery farming Altilium secured £19m in funding from UK Government for EV battery recycling facility

We dropped in on Round to discuss their seed round

Best of the rest

Interstellar lasers Archangel Lightworks raised £10m Series A led by Santander Alternative Investments for space-to-ground laser communications
Banking on SMEs Wamo landed an £8.6m Series A led by 3TS Capital Partners to roll out SME financial operating platform across Europe
The exclusive Round announced its £4.5m seed round led by Alstin Capital to unify finance into one command system
Securing AI payments Ralio unlocked a £1.8m pre-seed round led by Sure Valley Ventures to provide safer infrastructure for agentic payments
Jobs for GenZ urfuture secured a £1.7m seed round led by River Capital to rebuild entry-level hiring
The hot stuff Ascension raised £1.7m in funding from UKI2S and Innovate UK to tap geothermal critical mineral reserves
One for home moovers Openmoove landed £700k in funding led by Development Bank of Wales to streamline property transaction workflows

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Dry powder

UK Gov launched Sovereign AI with a £500 million fund to back UK AI startups in strategic technologies
Eka Ventures closed new £80 million Fund II to back UK pre-seed and seed impact founders‌‍‍‌‌

The scout

⏳ 6 months ago

ClaimSorted landed £10m seed round led by Atomico to transform insurance through its proprietary claims platform
Ploy raised £2.5m led by Osney Capital to automate identity, governance and security for mid-market firms
Allye Energy raised £1.9m seed round led by Elbow Beach to expand smart battery storage for off-grid applications

⌛ 12 months ago

Mindset AI secured £4.3m led by Edge VC and Pembroke to expand embedded AI agents for SaaS
Inephany raised £1.8m led by Amadeus to cut LLM training costs with breakthrough AI optimisation
Hammer Missions landed £1.4m led by ACF Investors to expand AI drone inspection software into North America

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