> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # EP + Weekly: The Biggest UK Startup Stories This Week - URL: https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/ep-weekly-the-biggest-uk-startup-stories-this-week-10/ - Published: 2026-10-03T20:00:21.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-03T20:00:21.000Z - Description: UK startups are attracting bigger cheques even as deal numbers stay flat. From Nscale's $35 billion target valuation to Basecamp Research's $140 million raise, capital is concentrating on fewer, higher-conviction bets. - Author: Sharoni Banerjee - Tags: Ecosystem Intel --- **Two London companies built their businesses on home soil, but one left the UK behind for years, and the other just got handed its best year by UK law.** Wondering where it all started? Well, **Cleo** started in 2016 as a chatbot on Facebook Messenger, built in London by **Barney Hussey-Yeo**, famous for roasting your spending habits in a voice that sounds like a mate, not a bank, and it worked. **Cleo** scaled hard, hitting $185 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2024, then $280 million by mid-2025\. Almost none of that came from the UK, nearly all of it came from the US, where Cleo quietly became a serious business while barely anyone back home noticed. Only this year has it relaunched properly in the UK, re-entering a market it built in and then left behind. But **Yoti** never left, it was founded in London a year earlier, in 2015, and it built its whole business on identity and age verification, and spent years as a useful but unglamorous compliance tool. Then the **UK's Online Safety Act** landed, and everything changed, their revenue jumped 55% to £20.3 million in the year to March, and it hit its first month of EBITDA profitability. Over a billion age checks completed worldwide. The law didn't just help Yoti, but it also built the market **Yoti** had been waiting years for. Same city. Same era. One company found its fortune by leaving Britain behind while the other found its fortune by being exactly where British regulation needed it to be. Read the full breakdown of[*How Cleo makes money*](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/how-cleo-makes-money-the-ai-chatbot-turning-roasting-into-revenue/) *and* [*How Yoti makes money.*](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/how-yoti-makes-money-from-age-verification-and-the-online-safety-act/) --- ## Also on EP+ this week: → Nobody quite agrees on who actually owns the [*UK's voice AI* ](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/who-really-owns-the-uks-booming-voice-ai-industry/)boom, and untangling it took longer than we expected. → **Alex Kendall** wants you in a [*self-driving taxi* ](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/would-you-ride-in-alex-kendalls-self-driving-taxi/)with no steering wheel. We asked whether that's actually a good idea yet. → [*Cap table waterfalls* ](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/what-is-a-cap-table-waterfall-and-why-it-matters-at-exit/)decide who actually gets paid first when a company sells, and most founders have never modelled their own. → [*ElevenLabs and Ozone*](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/what-elevenlabs-and-ozone-reveal-about-uk-media-technology/) are both British, both in **media technology,** and building almost nothing alike, which tells you something about where the sector's actually heading. → [*Cambridge Tech Week* ](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/cambridge-tech-weeks-winner-is-raising-1m/)picked a winner, and that winner is already out raising £1 million. →[ *Charles Delingpole built ComplyAdvantage*](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/the-founder-who-fired-himself-what-charles-delingpole-did-after-building-complyadvantage/), then walked away from his own company. We found out what he did next. → [*Non-compete and IP assignment clauses*](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/non-compete-and-ip-assignment-clauses-what-uk-startup-contracts-need/) sound like boilerplate until the day a co-founder leaves and takes a client list with them. → [*Family offices investing*](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/can-family-office-investors-claim-seis-and-eis-relief-on-a-startup-fundraise/) in UK startups keep asking the same question about SEIS and EIS relief, so we actually answered it properly. --- ## The wider ecosystem made one bet that dwarfed the rest. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/05/a4/05a4a052-18ab-4836-8924-ec8b322c371c/content/images/2026/10/UK-Startups----Billion-Dollar-Bets.png) UK startup funding bets **Nscale** filed for a US listing targeting a **$35 billion** valuation, then raised $3.36 billion in pre-IPO funding from investors including Nvidia, Third Point and Apollo. In the same filing, the London company reported **$140.6 million** in revenue for the first half of 2026, up 1,252% year-on-year, against a net loss of **$1.02 billion** over the same period. It also disclosed compute agreements with **Microsoft and Anthropic** worth up to **$88 billion** combined, tied to a data centre campus in West Virginia. Founded two years ago as a crypto mining operation, it is now one of Europe's largest AI infrastructure bets. **Basecamp Research**, the London biotech teaching AI models to design medicines from genetic data collected in rainforests and hot springs, raised $140 million, backed by **Nvidia and Anthropic's Anthology Fund. The National Wealth Fund** backed **Nexeon**, the UK battery company, with a further **$100 million**. **Reactive Technologies**, the London grid-stability company, secured €19 million from the **European Investment Bank**. None of this happened in isolation. **UK VC funding value** is up 130% year-on-year through August, even as the number of deals stays almost flat. The money isn't spreading wider, it's landing heavier, on fewer companies, betting bigger each time. --- ## One pattern we noticed Two companies, two opposite instincts. **Cleo** went looking for growth outside the UK, while **Yoti** stayed home and let the market eventually catch up to it. **Nscale** on the other hand, is pouring **$35 billion** into infrastructure nobody's finished building yet, and **Basecamp** is putting $140 million behind medicine nobody's tested in a patient yet. Every one of these companies is years away from knowing if they were right. The only thing that's changed in the last fortnight is the size of the number attached to finding out. --- ## One number **$1.02 billion**, that number is Nscale's net loss for the first half of 2026, against the **$140.6 million** in revenue, filed the same week it sought a $35 billion valuation. --- ## Question of the week $35 billion for **Nscale**. £20 million for **Yoti**. Two very different bets on building a British tech company. Which approach would you take? So, what do you think? Email us your answer at ***editorial@entrepreneurplus.co.uk.*** We read every response and may bring some of your perspectives into next week’s brief. --- **Sources:* Cleo figures from Sacra, Dealroom, and redbus.uk reporting on Companies House filings. Yoti figures from CityAM, via Companies House filings, and Yoti's own CEO updates. Nscale figures from its SEC Form S-1 and DRS/A filings, CityAM, DataCenterDynamics, and Silicon Republic. Basecamp Research figures from BioSpace, GenEngNews and Konsulteer. UK VC funding figures from GlobalData, via the Armchair Trader. National Wealth Fund/Nexeon figures from Batteries News. Reactive Technologies figures from EU-Startups.*