The 50 UK B2B tech startups to watch
Founders of UK business technology companies started in 2019 or later, chosen by the VETTDD editorial team from funding announcements, company results and Companies House filings, September 2026.
Peter Garraghan
Founder and Chief Science Officer, Mindgard
Mindgard raised a $30m (£22.4m) Series A in August 2026, led by Album VC, taking total funding to nearly $42m. Its research team has disclosed more than 150 vulnerabilities in AI products, including flaws in Cursor, Google Antigravity and ChatGPT. Garraghan, who founded the Lancaster University spinout in 2022, has been chief science officer since October 2025, when James Brear became chief executive. For UK buyers putting AI into production, it offers continuous attack testing of models and agents.
Andy Smith
Co-founder and CEO, Tracebit
Tracebit raised a $20m (£15m) Series A in March 2026, led by FirstMark with Accel and MMC Ventures, and opened a New York office. Its cloud canaries now watch about 5 billion events a week for customers including Riot Games, Snyk, Docker and Admiral Insurance. Smith, co-founder and chief executive, built the company on an ‘assume breach’ principle. For UK organizations on public cloud, it adds a detection layer that flags intruders the moment they touch a decoy.
Melissa Chambers
Co-founder and CEO, Sitehop
Sitehop raised £7.5m in October 2025, launched SAFEcore Edge, a compact post-quantum encryption device for remote infrastructure, in April 2026 and was named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer in June. Under Chambers, its hardware is deployed with a tier-one carrier across seven countries, and in the past two months it has launched a national security unit and opened a US office. It gives UK operators of critical networks a home-grown way to prepare data in transit for the quantum era.
Alastair Paterson
CEO and Co-Founder, Harmonic Security
Harmonic Security extended its AI data controls to agents with an MCP Gateway in October 2025, and in May 2026 was named to Notable Capital’s Rising in Cyber list, voted by about 150 CISOs. Its own analysis of 22.4 million enterprise prompts found 579,113 containing sensitive data. Paterson, who sold Digital Shadows to ReliaQuest for $160m (£120m), leads the company as chief executive. For UK security teams, it offers a way to govern staff and agent use of AI rather than ban it.
Eno Thereska
Co-founder and CEO, Trent AI
Trent AI came out of stealth in April 2026 with a $13m (£9.7m) seed round led by LocalGlobe and Cambridge Innovation Capital, with angels from OpenAI, Databricks and Spotify. In May it published an AI Security Maturity Model covering 28 categories. Thereska, a former distinguished engineer at AWS and Confluent, co-founded it with Cambridge’s Neil Lawrence. For UK organizations deploying AI agents, it offers security built for software that acts on its own.
Harry Wetherald
Co-founder and CEO, Maze
Maze launched Maze Code in June 2026, extending its AI security agents from cloud infrastructure to the code teams write and the open-source packages they depend on. The company says early results show about 90% of CVEs are not exploitable in context, and its agents deliver verified fixes for those that are. Co-founded by Wetherald in 2024 and backed by a $25m Series A, Maze gives UK security teams a way to cut vulnerability backlogs down to the findings that carry real risk.
John Daley
Co-founder and CEO, HelmGuard
HelmGuard raised a $7.3m seed round in September 2026 for AI agents that assess risk and compliance evidence directly from company systems. The company says it cuts assessment time by up to 80%, and it assessed 1,250 counterparties for one US insurer in under a week. Led by Daley, a former Palantir executive, it offers UK financial services and insurance firms a faster route through third-party risk reviews and a way to assure the AI agents their vendors now deploy.
Chloe Coleman
Co-founder and CEO, Vouchsafe
Vouchsafe added Innovatrics face verification and liveness detection in February 2026 and in September began working with credit reference agency Noggin HQ to combine financial-health data with its fraud network. Its government-certified checks let regulated firms verify some of the 11 million UK adults without photo ID, with vouching now about a fifth of its verifications. Under Coleman, it gives UK lenders, employers and landlords a way to meet identity rules without turning away eligible customers.
Jacob Prime
Co-founder and CEO, Ploy
Ploy raised a £2.5m seed round led by Osney Capital in October 2025, having doubled revenue with a team of four, and in June 2026 was one of five finalists in Infosecurity Europe’s first Cyber Startup competition. Its AI agent, Luna, now runs access requests, reviews and revocations across 62 integrations. Under Prime, Ploy gives mid-sized UK businesses audit-ready identity governance without an enterprise budget, and gives MSPs and resellers a new partner program to deliver it.
Ashima Chopra
Founder and CEO, Datambit
Datambit joined NATO’s DIANA accelerator in 2026, one of 150 companies chosen from 3,680 applicants, and in June was one of five finalists in Infosecurity Europe’s first Cyber Startup competition. Founded by Chopra in 2023, it detects deepfaked audio and video, including in live calls, and has worked with Nationwide and Mastercard through the City of London AI Innovation Challenge. It gives UK banks and finance teams a check against voice and video impersonation at the point of payment.