Britain’s economy urgently needs new businesses and jobs to replace the old, cried Downing Street’s favourite think tank, The Resolution Foundation, in its new year outlook this month.
They need look no further than our second annual Sunday Times 100 Tech ranking of Britain’s fastest-growing privately owned tech companies.
Most of the businesses were set up by their founders in the past ten years, and in the past three years alone the 100 companies have created 11,600 new jobs, taking their total workforces to over 23,100 people. The majority are planning to continue to hire this year, adding a further 4,300 roles.
These are well-paid jobs. The salary range at the London-based AI voice agent specialist PolyAI for entry-level software engineers is £80,000 to £100,000 a year. The specialist drug maker Cycle Pharmaceuticals says it plans to expand its clinical drug development team in Cambridge this year, with entry manager-level roles typically in the £70,000 to £100,000 range. Our survey of the 100 companies that feature suggests first-time job hunters for all roles can expect at least £40,000 a year from the majority.
They will be exciting, and demanding, places to work. The founders and management teams are steering them through a period of hypergrowth.
Richard Tyler on Times Radio explaining Evaro and other fast-growing UK companies
The companies grew on average by 128 per cent a year for their past three years of trading to revenues of £3.7 billion.
We split our ranking between software companies, which typically grow the fastest, and hardware and life sciences firms, which often have to invest more capital to achieve the same rates of growth. Our software firms, which include financial and AI services, clocked up average annual growth rates of 151 per cent a year — and the minimum rate of growth at 80 per cent a year is significantly higher than the 65 per cent required to achieve a place on this table last year.
Our hardware companies, from satellite and rocket makers to those supplying electric batteries and charging stations as well as life sciences firms — typically drug makers — averaged a still remarkable 105 per cent average growth a year.
More than half the companies have their headquarters in London, with 11 in the east of England, many clustered around Cambridge, four in Northern Ireland and three in Scotland.
• Interactive maps: the UK tech firms hiring graduates — and paying £40k plus
Only 16 of the businesses were founded or are led by women, but this small number does include our No 1 ranked firm, the fintech Abound. Its cofounder Michelle He, 44, has helped to lead it to profitable revenues of £66.8 million last year, up a staggering 490.24 per cent a year. We also feature eight remarkable Ones to Watch companies, all founded or led by women. There are 14 university spinouts — including 10 from Oxford and Cambridge, such as the quantum security specialist PQShield.
Sixty-two of the companies reported a loss in their latest financial year, with those losses covered by relatively patient investors. More than 90 of the companies have secured external investment, raising £11.3 billion. Our 50 hardware companies raised twice as much as their software counterparts. Large rounds raised by fibre broadband providers such as Netomnia and CityFibre, as well as the battery tech firm Zenobē, skew the overall total.
The investors range from the British taxpayer — the government’s Covid-era Future Fund has a stake in the Glasgow digital pharmacy Phlo — to the US chip maker Nvidia, which has a stake in PolyAI and also the AI video creator Synthesia, valued at about $2.1 billion last year. It is expected to soon close a new round at an even higher valuation.
Synthesia is one of eight companies valued at more than $1 billion by their investors. We add two more as achieving that milestone: Cycle Pharmaceuticals and Halo Service Solutions — based on the companies’ profitability or approaches from other firms wanting to acquire them.
The London-based fintech Revolut, a former No 1 company, is now too big to feature — we impose a £250 million revenue maximum. Other companies busting through that threshold and which appeared on last year’s ranking include the digital healthcare firm Cera, the insurance technology business Marshmallow and the neobank Zopa. The consumer electronics firm Nothing, founded in 2020 and already valued at $1.3 billion, also escapes our grasp. It has rocketed from sales of £18 million in 2021 to £420 million in 2024.
Eagle-eyed readers will also notice the absence of the datacentre newcomer Nscale, which is working on large-scale projects in the UK with the US giants OpenAI, Microsoft and Nvidia. It is simply too young. Other highly valued firms such as ElevenLabs, which creates highly realistic synthetic voices for business use, also do not have sufficient years of trading to meet our criteria — nine such stars feature on our AI Ones to Watch.
The Sunday Times 100 Tech 2026
Top 5 software companies
1. Abound
▲ 490.24%
Lending fintech
Michelle He and Gerald Chappell launched this lending business during the Covid lockdowns. It reached profitable revenues of £66.8 million in 2025 and surpassed £1 billion in loans last September.
2. Vertice
▲ 437.37%
AI procurement platform
The brothers Eldar and Roy Tuvey started Vertice in 2021 to help companies manage their software subscriptions. They have secured $100 million from investors and opened hubs around the world.
3. Oxbury Bank
▲ 399.21%
Banking fintech
Specialising in loans for farmers, the Chester-based Oxbury has lent more than £1.5 billion and attracted £2.5 billion in savings since it secured its banking licence in 2021.
4. BondAval
▲ 334.47%
Credit insurance
The former professional rugby player Tom Powell cofounded this insurance software firm with Sam Damoussi in 2020. The pair count Shell and BP among their customers.
5. Lindus Health
▲ 265.74%
Clinical trials platform
Michael Young and Meri Beckwith set up Lindus Health in 2021 to fix what they describe as the “broken” clinical trials process. Investors include Peter Thiel, the billionaire cofounder of PayPal.
Top 5 hardware/other companies
1. Fuse Energy
▲ 484.09%
Energy supplier
Founded in 2022 by two former Revolut executives, Alan Chang and Charles Orr, Fuse supplies energy as cheaply as possible. The start-up hit a $5 billion valuation last year.
2. E1
▲ 470.15%
Electric raceboat developer
Proprietary electric propulsion systems power the racing boats used by the global sports media firm set up by the Spanish businessman Alejandro Agag. The 2026 season starts next week.
3. Netomnia
▲ 352.78%
Fibre broadband provider
Backed by more than £1.6 billion in funding, this Tewkesbury-based full-fibre broadband provider plans to reach five million premises next year. It is led by the chief executive Jeremy Chelot.
4. Magic AI
▲ 342.16%
AI personal trainer
This company’s high-tech mirror is used by 24,000 fitness enthusiasts who follow training sessions led by athletes including the Team GB sprinter Desirèe Henry and the cricketer Alastair Cook.
5. Autifony Therapeutics
▲ 200.34%
Nervous system disorder drugs
Founded in 2011 as a spinout from GSK, the Stevenage-based Autifony signed a deal in 2023 worth up to $770.5 million to develop drugs tackling serious diseases of the central nervous system.
Explore the Sunday Times 100 Tech — interviews, company profiles and more