2026 Finalists
Founders
Game Changer
PLAYBACK SPORTS AI
PLAYBACK is turning academies into professional-grade showcases by giving them free AI cameras and software, then monetizing through player subscriptions.
Twinnin
Twinnin is the consent registry for the AI age, where real humans verify and license their likeness, ensuring they get paid and protected as synthetic media explodes.
SIYTE
SIYTE unifies fragmented CCTV and sensors into a single intelligence layer so AI guardians can detect threats and trigger responses.
Finmile
Finmile is the execution operating system for logistics, replacing spreadsheets and WhatsApp with AI that runs the day, cutting routes by 42% and claims by 82%.
Ctrl Alt
Ctrl Alt is turning real-world assets like property and private equity into digital investments – making capital markets more efficient, transparent, and accessible for institutions.
Soonicorn
Ctrl Alt
Ctrl Alt is turning real-world assets like property and private equity into digital investments – making capital markets more efficient, transparent, and accessible for institutions.
Sprive
Sprive is a fintech app that helps homeowners pay off their mortgages faster by transforming everyday shopping into cashback that can be sent directly to their lender with one tap.
Woolf Helmets
Woolf Helmets is a hardware startup that’s built the world’s smartest folding helmet – it packs down in half a second and comes with hands-free lights and crash detection for urban riders.
Fundpath
Fundpath is a business intelligence platform that connects fund buyers and sellers with real-time data – helping asset managers spot live opportunities and close bigger deals.
Zinc
Zinc is an automation platform that turns the painful slog of employee background checks into a fast, candidate-friendly experience – cutting weeks down to hours.
Eco Innovator
ZenVolt.tech LTD
ZenVolt connects live battery performance data to financial decisions – using physics‑based AI to give lenders, operators, and funds an independent, verifiable trust layer for underwriting and optimising grid‑scale storage.
Chimera Energy Ltd
Chimera Energy produces Arctic Vault, a lightweight, multi‑chemistry battery capable of charging and discharging below ‑40°C, suited to extreme environment operations.
HyFlux LTD
HyFlux is building superconducting electric motors with integrated cryogenic cooling – solving the cooling bottleneck to make hydrogen‑electric flight commercially scalable and certifiable.
Nature Equity Limited
Nature Equity is turning natural flood management data into bankable evidence, helping investors screen, value, and fund nature‑based solutions at national scale.
Gryd
Gryd funds and manages solar and battery systems on new-build housing developments so housebuilders can meet zero‑cost compliance and homeowners get discounted, fixed‑price energy.
Customer Champion
Tootilab
Tootilab is a curly hair care brand built by and for curly-haired people, formulated and tested specifically for curls after years of watching big beauty brands treat curly hair as an afterthought.
Final Rentals
Final Rentals is a car rental fintech platform that digitizes small local agencies, publishing their cars globally to help them compete with the big guys and grow their revenue.
JUX Food
Juxfood uses freeze-drying technology to capture herbs, garlic and vegetables at peak freshness, locking in real flavour for months so home cooks can eat well without the waste of fresh produce going off before it’s used.
Sprive
Sprive is a fintech app that helps homeowners pay off their mortgages faster by turning everyday shopping into cashback that can be sent directly to their lender with one tap.
Sailia
Sailia is a vertical SaaS platform for experience businesses like escape rooms and go-karting tracks, replacing the 10-15 separate tools most operators juggle with one system for bookings, staffing, CRM and payments.
Inspiring Entrepreneur
Nayantara Sriram
Supply Unchained is the agentic compliance infrastructure for global trade: legal and regulatory expertise, automated to identify human rights risks across supply chains at scale.
Rob Hall
Tempo Audits is a fast-growth infosec audit firm for early-stage tech – bootstrapped, profitable, and redefining SOC 2/ISO certifications with 5-star service.
Juliet Bakovljev
The Arzen Collective is a collaborative wellness hub where 40+ medical and holistic practitioners work together to treat the whole person, not just the symptoms.
Ali Adam
Chest is a pension-fintech that turns everyday cashback into retirement savings, making pensions feel rewarding and relevant for Millennials and Gen Z.
Florence Sargent
RED-Scue is a carbohydrate-first sports nutrition brand creating real-food energy bars to help athletes fuel properly and prevent career-ending underfuelling.
Top Workplace
Wild
Wild is on a mission to banish single-use bathroom products, creating stylish, sustainable personal care with award-winning refillable deodorants.
Tootilab
Tootilab is a curly hair care brand built by and for curly-haired people, formulated and tested specifically for curls after years of watching big beauty brands treat curly hair as an afterthought.
Lem-uhn
Lem-uhn is the feel-good PR agency, championing purpose-led brands and creating a positive, people-first environment for their team.
Zinc
Zinc makes background checks seamless and stress-free – turning identity verification into a fast, positive experience for everyone involved.
Foundervine
Foundervine is one of the UK’s largest startup accelerators, giving diverse founders with the skills and support to scale confidently.
Social Sensation
Topic Hero
Topic Hero is an AI-driven app that lets people argue out their frustrations with a stranger on the opposite side of a topic, with AI judging who made the more coherent, compelling case.
AuumAI
AuumAI reaches notoriously hard-to-access institutional investors through The Agentic Allocator, a professional video interview series distributed on LinkedIn and YouTube that has already featured leaders from major asset managers.
Imagine Me Stories
Imagine Me Stories is a monthly discovery box of Black children’s books and empowering Black history activities, built after its founder saw firsthand how the lack of representation in children’s books affects self-esteem.
KIGO Limited
KIGO is tackling the school run, the congestion, pollution and safety risk of thousands of parents driving the same route in isolation, by helping families share and optimise the journey together.
Tootilab
Tootilab is a curly hair care brand built by and for curly-haired people, formulated and tested specifically for curls after years of watching big beauty brands treat curly hair as an afterthought.
Captivating Mission
Equal Reach
EqualReach is an impact-driven freelancing marketplace connecting businesses with vetted, refugee-led teams for project-based work in marketing, AI and web design, turning displacement into dignified digital work.
Orli
Orli helps children who struggle to express distress in words show how they feel before it reaches crisis point, built by an A&E doctor after seeing how easily kids without a voice fall through the cracks.
ProMaterial Ltd
ProMaterial builds AI-vision inspection hardware that catches manufacturing defects in critical EV, wind turbine and robotics materials before they become costly rework or waste, bringing quality intelligence to clean-tech manufacturing.
Rainbox Technologies Ltd
Rainbox has built a membrane-free water purification system that can treat almost any feed water, including grey water and high-contaminant sources, aiming to unlock access for the 2 billion people worldwide without safe water.
Restord
Restord turns woody green waste that costs UK operators money to dispose of into carbon removal credits, agricultural biochar and renewable energy, building what it aims to be the UK’s largest biochar platform.
Community Leader
Focused for Business
Focused For Business supports start-ups raising their first or second equity round create investor-ready materials, connect with expert advisers and investors, and negotiate and close funding. Three in four achieve their funding goal.
Lets Fund Her
Lets Fund Her connects young, ambitious women through in-person events and community spaces, plus practical finance and fundraising courses, to make entrepreneurship less lonely and demystify raising money.
Pioneering People
Pioneering People connects businesses to instant, verified temporary staff and pays workers the same day, above living wage and without platform fees, built for gig economy workers for whom cash flow is often the real problem.
Scribe
Scribe is a private markets platform that helps founders to find investors, with data. To date, they’ve helped over 1,400 founders to get in front of investors from their database of >850k Angel investors.
The Modernists
The Modernists aggregates hundreds of thousands of independent membership spaces and events worldwide onto one platform, letting members drop into curated communities in cities from Vienna to Chicago.
Investors
Angel of the Year
JP Harrop
JP Harrop is a hands-on angel investor and mentor, backing early-stage startups he believes in through funding, advice and community.
Cheila Gibbs
Harrington Blue’s Cheila Gibbs invests across AI, healthcare, infrastructure, climate and social impact, backing ventures like Meno.I, an AI-driven women’s health platform, and Supply Unchained’s compliance infrastructure.
Gan Zhang
Gan Zhang is an angel investor focused on overlooked industries like supply chain, hospitality and public procurement, backing five early-stage startups in two years, four of which have gone on to raise VC funding.
Ed Pragnell
Ed Pragnell is an angel investor who backs climate tech, travel and healthcare startups, including connecting an investee company into a nature impact fund now leading its Series A round.
Matt Cooper
Matt Cooper is one of Europe’s most prolific angel investors, having made over 400 angel investments since moving into startup advising after leaving Capital One in London.
Fund of the year
SFC Capital
SFC Capital is the UK’s most active early-stage investor, writing checks into British startups since 2012 and following on into its best performers through a dedicated EIS All-Star Fund.
Araya Ventures
Araya Ventures is a pre-seed and seed-stage VC firm backing exceptional founders across health tech, fintech, AI, commerce and the future of work, with over 70% of its portfolio in AI.
AI Seed
AI Seed is a specialist AI venture capital fund with the UK and Europe’s best-performing portfolio of pure-play, vertical AI investments, including £1bn+ AI fintech unicorn 9fin.
Sapphire Capital Partners
Sapphire Capital Partners has brought over 60 funds to market and deployed growth capital into 100+ high-growth businesses, with a deliberate focus on backing founders outside London and the South East.
Haatch
Haatch is a UK venture capital firm backing pre-seed and seed B2B SaaS founders solving deep operational pains, having invested in over 200 companies with a combined portfolio enterprise valuation exceeding £1bn.