Edinburgh AI specialist named as one of UK’s top ten tech scale-ups

An Edinburgh-based specialist in artificial intelligence has been named as one of the UK’s top ten technology start-ups and scale-ups.

Capital-based Kythera AI, which provides advanced tools for designing artificial intelligence (AI) in 3D game engines, has been singled out by industry body Tech Nation.

The organisation has selected the ten winners of its fourth “rising stars” competition, which recognises the “brightest and best” early-stage tech scale-ups from across the UK.

Tech Nation said Kythera AI’s success as an early-stage Scottish technology company reflected the “strength and fast growth” of the nation’s tech sector overall.

Matthew Jack is CEO and lead architect at Edinburgh-based tech company Kythera AI.

This year sees the most regionally and gender diverse set of winners in the competition’s history, with seven out of the ten businesses hailing from outside of London and the south east of England.

Six out of the ten companies have a female founder or co-founder, and Tech Nation said this representation mirrors the strength of female-founded businesses overall, which have attracted more investment in 2022 so far than the whole of 2021 and 2020.

Esme Caulfield, competitions lead at Tech Nation, said: “This year’s Tech Nation Rising Stars 4.0 winners demonstrate the very best of UK tech innovation. It’s been so exciting to see this year’s winners disrupting a wide variety of tech sectors. like fintech, lawtech and so many others, including - for the first time - deathtech.

“Perhaps even more excitingly, this is one of our most diverse cohorts yet, with the majority of winning companies having female founders or co-founders, and nearly three quarters hailing from outside of London.”

Joy Thurston, operations coordinator at Kythera AI, said: “Being recognised as a Rising Stars 4.0 Winner is a testament to the incredible work of everyone at Kythera AI.

“We've been on a mission to bring intelligent life to virtual worlds in games and beyond since 2012, and this competition has been a great way for us to share our story so far.

“This is an exciting time for Kythera AI, with a number of contracts recently secured and our first round of seed investment successfully completed. We're looking forward to the future.”

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