Seb Johnson

Talking about UK and European Tech. Subscribe to my newsletter to keep up to date.

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

The UK has already minted 18 unicorns already in 2026

The total for 2025 was 20 so we are going to surpass it soon.

UK tech is on track to have its strongest year since 2021, and its not just AI companies that are performing well.

Consumer companies, fintechs, hardware, defence... the UK is firing on all cylinders.

Here are some of the UK's newest unicorns:

> OLIX from @jamesdacombe
> Huel led by James McMaster and now acquired
> Fresha from William Zeqiri and Nick Miller
> CuspAI from @ac_edwards_1 and Max Welling
> Granola from Christopher Pedregal and @samstphenson
> Nyobolt from Sai Shivareddy and Clare Grey
> @join_ef from @matthewclifford and @Alicebentinck
> Allica Bank from Richard Davies
> UFORCE from Oleg Rogynskyy

Map is unrelated but from John Tan and @dealroomco data from @yoramdw, @sabben, @smorla and team!

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

Founders should normalise pivoting, expanding and moving with the market.

Amelia Miller built ivee with her sister Lydia Miller after watching their mum struggle to return to work after a career break.

The shift in labour market pushed ivee to expand into an AI skills and consultancy platform that helps people keep up with what's happening in the world of work.

In my podcast Amelia discussed how admitting change publicly can be hard: “You don’t want to tell the world you’re changing because, honestly, you see it as a failure.”

She emphasises that founders should normalise moving with the market and agrees that change can be scary, but it can also be really beneficial afterwards.

This quote was taken from my interview with Amelia, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts.

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

We might be overcomplicating the energy conversation.

@alanchanguk from @fuseenergy sees it much more simply.

Countries that can produce vastly more energy will have a huge advantage over those that cannot.

Energy is not just an infrastructure question.

It is one of the foundations of economic growth.

[Judith Dada @DadaJudith]

We wrote https://t.co/1pLkJBYk9Y because we care deeply about Europe, and because we believe a strong Europe is important for a better world. The response has moved us.
With my co-authors, I've written in @TheEconomist on what Europe must do now.

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

Everyone is racing to adopt AI.

@DanWestgarth from @deel thinks we’re still missing the bigger challenge.

The tools are scaling rapidly and the business metrics look incredible, but most companies still struggle to turn AI into fundamental value.

The technology is moving fast.

Actually making it useful is proving much harder.

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

OpenAI has announced a brand new office in Stockholm as it doubles down on the Nordics.

The new office will act as a hub for the entire Nordic region.

The region, and Sweden in particular, has got an incredibly strong AI ecosystem producing phenomenal companies such as Lovable, Legora and Sana.

Today it has announced a new office in Stockholm to double down on the region and cater to the huge demand its seeing there:

> ChatGPT weekly active users in Sweden are up more than 50% YoY

> Codex weekly active users have grown more than 10x since the start of 2026

> API usage is up nearly 5x year over year

The team is hiring across go-to-market and Forward Deployed Engineering.

VERY COOL

Congrats @LauraModiano and team

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

Does anyone know anything about @IlirAliu_? He's got 50k followers, and yet his company page is blatantly copying and pasting my posts.

I reached out but got nothing back so curious if anyone knows whether he is running his own accounts or not

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

staying on brand as always @mati

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

You'll never guess how much they invested

[Bloomberg @business]

Poland has acquired a stake in artificial intelligence voice company ElevenLabs, as the country hopes to become a major European AI hub https://t.co/BAgQwDYESc

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

People assume Silicon Valley is always the best place to build.

@roxannevarza came to Paris and found the opposite.

Instead of a saturated market, she found a place where there was still so much left to build.

She’s since watched that ecosystem explode.

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

https://t.co/nWaE0m75EW

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

A UK AI company is raising a huge $400m round at a $2.6bn valuation, and Jeff Bezos is personally investing.

The startup building a generative AI platform to accelerate the discovery and design of new materials.

It already counts ASML, Meta and Hyundai Motor Company as customers, who use its technology to design and simulate new materials with the properties they need to develop new products.

Everyone I speak who has any inside knowledge of the company is INCREDIBLY excited by what the team have built.

This is reportedly one of the fastest growing companies in the country.

@tim article linked below.

NICE @ac_edwards_1 @wellingmax

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

“Half of the work of the company is going to be done by AI agents supervised by humans. AI needs to be smart enough about what's happening at the company that they're going to do good, useful work."

@samstphenson , Co-founder of @meetgranola, explains why company conversations are valuable sources of context.

Granola started by making great meeting notes for one person after one meeting, but the now they turn meetings into company memory as an AI-notepad.

In March, @meetgranola became a unicorn. AMAZING work from @cjpedregal & @samstphenson

This quote was taken from my interview with Sam, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts.

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

People often assume that if something doesn't exist, there is no market for it.

@JuneAngelides found the opposite when she built Mums in Tech.

Nobody had ever built a child-friendly coding school, yet she quickly realised the ecosystem was hungry for something different.

Leaving a safe job to build the unknown turned out to be one of the best bets she ever made.

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

@aidangomez Yeah makes total sense - I’m all for it

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

Canada's leading LLM company, valued at $20bn, is massively expanding its presence in London!

It is tripling its London headcount.

After acquiring German Aleph Alpha the company is positioning itself as a "Sovereign" alternative to OpenAI and Anthropic (who have also announced large London expansions).

A coalition of so-called "Middle powers" is exactly what
@DadaJudith, @bakkermichiel, @philip_fox_, @AlexTPet, @TomChivers argue is necessary in their Europe 2031 paper.

So although the company is not British, it is able to position itself as a Sovereign alternative.

VERY INTERESTING

@KanishkaNarayan, Minister for AI, said:

"Cohere’s focus on sovereign AI – helping businesses and government deploy this technology securely, on their own terms – is exactly the kind of capability we are building in Britain.”

WELCOME @cohere @aidangomez @nickfrosst

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

A UK startup can now assess skin cancer from a smartphone!

People have been talking about using AI to cure cancer.

This is the first time I've seen a company actually come close.

Users take a close-up photo of a mole or lesion through the app and it returns one of two results: clear, or a referral for further assessment.

The same decision a dermatologist would make but made autonomously by an AI on a consumer device.

The technology has already been used on 230,000 patients and identified over 20,000 cancers, but this is the first time it's being used on a smartphone.

CRAZY, amazing stuff from the team at @SkinAnalytics

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

Salesforce just bought Intercom (now Fin) for $3.6bn.

It also just bought confluent.

The company is scooping up a lot of the SaaS-era companies.

VERY INTERESTING

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

Being native in the matters of Europe can be a superpower.

Building for a fragmented market from the start forces European startups to think globally much faster than those in single unified markets.

@jordiromero, founder & CEO of Factorial, explains the advantage for European founders. He states that Europe has the people, but effort & ambition from the whole society needs to be appreciated.

Factorial was born in Barcelona and raised a while ago $150m from General Catalyst at a $2.5bn valuation.

Another example of a European company building globally from day one and seeing amazing results. 🚀

This quote was taken from my interview with Jordi, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts.

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

Germany's most valuable AI startup, @n8n_io, is doubling down on London as it announces a large expansion here!

In the last 7 days ElevenLabs, Lovable, Legora and Cursor all announced large expansions in London.

Now n8n is doing the same as it targets 200 employees here over the next few years.

The German startup, founded by @JanOberhauser, became Germany's highest valued AI startup after SAP invested at a $5.2bn valuation earlier this year.

The company is now doing over €100m ARR.

LETS GO