The AI Companies You May Not Have Heard Of

Welcome to London Tech Weekly. Each week, we’re going to highlight a startup or VC firm in London that’s doing cool shit. And see some of the deals that’s happened right here in London in the past week. If you’re looking for something to do, check out my pick at the end.

When we think of AI companies in London, our minds will think of DeepMind. But reader, there are other companies. And here’s a few of them.

The Keyboard Company

It’s 2008. And one year ago, Steve Jobs moaned about typing with buttons on mobile phones when revealing what would become the defining product of the early 21st century. The mobile revolution was coming. Jon Reynolds and Ben Medlock saw this and the potential of software keyboards, so they started a company.

After taking a couple of years to get the algorithms right, they finally had a product. Because of Apple’s walled garden, Android was what they launched on in 2010.

It blew up. And a few major versions (and years) later, millions of users and Apple’s garden coming down for keyboards, they raised $17.5m at Series B. For a keyboard??? The investors’ bets paid off. In 2016, Microsoft bought SwiftKey for $250m. And since then, it’s been integrated across Microsoft products.

Fighting Fraud

As e-commerce exploded in 2010s, so did illegitimate transactions. Building systems to fight fraud is hard, believe me. You have to analyse your dataset, build rules and alerting and do it so fast that you can block the transactions before they happen. So there’s a reason companies may look at an off-the-shelf solution rather than building all this in-house.

Ravelin was founded in 2014 to do exactly this. And by 2016, they’d raised $4.3m at Series A. At first they started with online marketplaces and e-commerce and quickly moved to support travel, ticketing and financial services. If there was a risk of fraud, Ravelin was there.

Data is king. And as Ravelin’s clients grew, an idea came. What if fraud insights could be shared across partners? So if somebody committed fraud on Spotify, when that person tried to defraud Trainline, they’re met with 🙅‍♂️.

These ideas and the doom-purchasing caused by Covid led to a $20m Series C in 2020. It’s unclear what the exit strategy is, acquisition or go public. But expect something in the next couple of years…

Making the Boring More Efficient

Amongst many things insurers have to do when assessing claims, figuring out repair costs is critical. The difference in getting an accurate estimate matters to the bottom-line. Tractable launched in 2016 to help with this problem.

Quickly, early clients (mostly insurance companies) found Tractable was improving efficiency in the claims process. Soon after in 2017, an $8m Series A came in. 2019 and 2021 brought a $25m Series B and $60m Series C respectively.

At the time of that $60m Series C, Tractable achieved unicorn status - making it the UK’s 100th unicorn! But after a $65m investment from Softbank last year, it’s up in the air if they’re still in that elite club.

What happened last week?

• Karri, a startup developing a walkie-talkie for children, raised £775k.

• Unibloom World, a data-driven platform for climate decisions, raised £650k.

• Punto Health, a digital health company focused on managing Alzheimer’s, raised £550k.

Harry’s pick

I’ve mentioned before about how great cycling in London is. But sometimes you go somewhere and may not want to take your bike with you. So you’ve hopped on the Overground to go to Hackney to a brewery your friend who’s really into IPAs says they really want to try.

Oh no, it’s now midnight, the Overground’s closed. And I’m in Hackney. So how am I supposed to get home? I don’t want to get the bus, phew there’s a Lime bike over there and I’m definitely sober enough to ride it... But a thirty minute journey on a Lime bike can be expensive.

Fortunately, there’s the Ride Pass with Lime. For £4 you get 30 minutes of Liming around London. It never occurred to me before, normally I’d close the pop up in the app until my flatmate mentioned it to me. And I realised how much sense it made.