UK Startup Funding Tracker

Most funding trackers give you a running total and no way to check it. This one works the other way round. Each round below carries the date it was announced and a link to the announcement itself, so you can see how old the figure is before you use it.

Last checked August 2026. It covers rounds announced during 2026.

The largest UK rounds of 2026 so far

Company	Raised	Stage	Lead investors	Announced
Isomorphic Labs	$2.1bn	Series B	Thrive Capital	12 May 2026
Nscale	$2bn	Series C	Aker ASA, 8090 Industries	9 Mar 2026
Wayve	$1.2bn	Series D	Eclipse, Balderton, SoftBank Vision Fund 2	25 Feb 2026
Ineffable Intelligence	$1.1bn	Seed	Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed	27 Apr 2026
ElevenLabs	$500m	Series D	Sequoia Capital	4 Feb 2026
CuspAI	$450m	Series B	Kleiner Perkins, NEA	20 Jul 2026
Oxford Quantum Circuits	£260m	Series C	Bullhound Capital	3 Jun 2026
PhysicsX	$300m	Series C	Temasek	8 Jun 2026

Amounts are given in the currency each company announced. Converting them to one currency would hide the fact that the exchange rate on the day is doing some of the work.

Three of those rounds came with a stated valuation:

Nscale at $14.6bn
Ineffable Intelligence at $5.1bn, on a seed round, from a company founded in 2025
PhysicsX at about $2.4bn, and CuspAI at $2.6bn

Isomorphic Labs, Wayve and OQC did not disclose one. That is normal, and it is why the valuation tracker is a shorter list than this one.

What the national total actually says

UK startups raised roughly $17bn in the first half of 2026. That is the strongest opening half since 2022 and about double the same period in 2025, on Dealroom and HSBC Innovation Banking figures reported by UKTN.

The composition matters more than the headline:

AI took about $12.6bn, close to three quarters of the total, and more than four times the same period in 2025.
Q1 alone was $7.8bn, up 60% year on year and the strongest first quarter since 2022.
The UK took 39% of all European venture capital in the half.
Four rounds were above $1bn. The four in the table above account for about $6.4bn between them, well over a third of everything raised.

So the record is real, and it belongs to a small number of companies. A founder raising a £1m seed round in 2026 is operating in a different market from the one the headline describes.

The other half of the market is shrinking

The British Business Bank measures the whole equity market rather than the top of it, and its Small Business Equity Tracker 2026 found the opposite trend at the early stage during calendar 2025:

Seed deal numbers fell 27% to 704, the sharpest fall of any stage.
Seed value stayed flat at £2.1bn, because the mean deal size rose while the median did not.
The median gap between rounds stretched from 12.4 months to 14.4 months.

Q1 2026 continued that: £1.5bn across 418 deals, down 43% on value. The pre-seed and seed page sets out those figures in full, including why the mean rise is one deal.

How to track rounds yourself

You do not need a subscription to verify a UK funding round. In order of reliability:

Companies House. Every UK company files form SH01 when it issues shares. It gives the number of shares and the price paid, usually within a month of the allotment. That is the round, on the public record, with no press office involved.
The company’s own announcement. Reliable on the amount and the lead investor. Treat undisclosed valuations as genuinely undisclosed rather than as something to estimate.
Sifted, UKTN and Tech.eu. They date their reporting and name their sources, which is what you need for a figure you intend to quote.
Dealroom and Beauhurst. Best used for market totals rather than single companies, because both publish their methods and their cut-off dates.

Two things to be wary of. Round sizes reported before a deal closes often move. And a total described as “raised to date” mixes equity, debt and grants unless it says otherwise.

Frequently asked questions

How much have UK startups raised in 2026?

About $17bn in the first half, on Dealroom and HSBC Innovation Banking data. That is roughly double the first half of 2025 and the strongest opening half since 2022. AI companies took around $12.6bn of it.

What is the biggest UK funding round of 2026?

Isomorphic Labs raised $2.1bn in a Series B led by Thrive Capital, announced on 12 May 2026. Nscale’s $2bn Series C in March was slightly smaller but came with a stated $14.6bn valuation, and was described as the largest Series C in European history.

Is UK startup funding growing?

At the top, sharply. At the bottom, no. Seed deal numbers fell 27% in 2025 while a handful of billion-dollar AI rounds pushed the national total to a four-year high. Both statements come from the sources linked above, and they are measuring different things.

Where can I check a UK funding round for free?

Companies House. The SH01 filing gives the share count and price paid for every UK share issue, normally within a month. It is the only source that does not depend on a company choosing to announce.

How often is this page updated?

It is checked and dated rather than claimed to be live. This version was checked in August 2026 and covers rounds announced during 2026.

What this page dropped

The previous version of this tracker was headed “2025” and reported £2.1bn raised across 156 rounds by 89 startups, with no source and no date range. It also offered industry, stage and location filters, a CSV export and a submission form, none of which worked.

All of that has gone. What replaced it is eight rounds you can check in about five minutes, plus the market figures that put them in context. If a figure here has gone stale, hello@idea-london.co.uk.