Former Google DeepMind employees have co-founded 57 startups that have each raised at least $10 million. Only 15 of them are based in the UK, according to the Royal Academy of Engineering’s State of UK Deep Tech 2026 report, built with Dealroom and published on 9 November. That is 26% of the 57, by our arithmetic.
The figure drew attention on X today after Seb Johnson (@sebjohnsonuk) posted the report’s chart: “Tens of billions have been raised by people who used to work there. Most of that has been raised outside the UK.” The report names Ineffable Intelligence, Isomorphic Labs and Recursive Superintelligence among the 57.
Business Pill · Sovereign AI
A short explainer on sovereign AI: why countries want AI capability at home. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss DeepMind or this report.
The key insight: As we read the report, the UK trained the founders but most of the companies sit elsewhere: 15 of 57 DeepMind alumni startups with $10M+ raised are UK-based, and the seven UK-based companies among the 30 charted hold 9% of their combined $63.7 billion, by our arithmetic.
The report’s chart covers former DeepMind employees and founders who went on to found VC-backed startups; it excludes interns, students and advisers, and shows the top 30 of the 57 by VC raised. Seven of those 30 are marked UK-based: Isomorphic Labs ($2.7B raised), Ineffable Intelligence ($1.1B), Emulate ($700M), Recursive Superintelligence ($650M), Reka AI ($168M), Orbital Industries ($71M) and Latent Labs ($59M).
The other 23 shown are marked as founded abroad, led by xAI ($37.1B raised), Mistral AI ($6.2B), Reflection AI ($4.6B), Physical Intelligence ($2.1B) and Inflection AI ($1.5B). The chart shows the remaining 27 of the 57 only in the total, and it marks UK or abroad without naming each company’s country.
Startups founded by former Google DeepMind staff that have raised at least $10 million, by base, and VC raised by the 30 the report charts. Source: The State of UK Deep Tech 2026 (Royal Academy of Engineering, Dealroom), via @sebjohnsonuk; sums and shares are our arithmetic.
What Was Posted on X
Only 15 out of 57 startups founded by deepmind alumni have stayed in the UK.
In the UK, we often praise Demis’s decision to stay in London with DeepMind as having a huge impact on the ecosystem.
And it has.
However, the data suggests it’s been less impactful than we might have liked.
Of the 57 deep-mind founded startups that have raised $10 million+, only 15 have stayed in the UK
DeepMind has definitely become the most important founder factory in the age of AI.
Tens of billions have been raised by people who used to work there.
Most of that has been raised outside the UK.
Data and image from The State of UK Deep Tech 2026, created with the Royal Academy of Engineering and @dealroomco (@yoramdw)
Seb Johnson posted the DeepMind alumni chart from The State of UK Deep Tech 2026, the Royal Academy of Engineering report built with Dealroom. The piece reads the company figures from this chart and checks the 57 and 15 against the Academy’s own release.
Where the Money Sits
By our arithmetic from the figures printed on the chart, the 30 companies shown have raised $63.7 billion. The seven UK-based ones account for $5.4 billion, or 9%. xAI alone is $37.1 billion; leave it out and the UK-based share of the remaining $26.6 billion is 20%.
The release says the UK case reflects “the persistent barriers to scaling in the UK, which risk leaving UK value unrealised or seeing the resulting talent, technologies and capabilities accumulate elsewhere”. Our earlier coverage of Recursive Superintelligence covers one of the UK-based seven.
A Different Count, a Similar Share
A separate dataset, from Evertrace and reported by tech.eu in May, counted 112 DeepMind alumni who had launched or were believed to be launching a startup in the previous 18 months: 70 in the US and 28 in the UK. That is 25% in the UK, by our arithmetic, close to the 26% in the Dealroom count, though the two use different definitions and periods.
The Wider UK Picture
The report puts UK deep tech investment on course for a record £12.8 billion this year, with 13 unicorns, and says AI-related companies account for 71% of it, up from 36% in 2025. It credits part of that to three billion-dollar rounds, for Isomorphic Labs, Wayve and Ineffable Intelligence.
It also says UK investors provide 59% of early-stage capital but only 21% of later-stage funding, and that alumni of 63 UK deep tech companies with significant commercial outcomes have founded 160 businesses that raised £10.5 billion. Our earlier coverage of AI’s contribution to UK output has the macro side.
The Structural Read
As we read the chart, one company sets the dollar split: xAI is $37.1 billion of the $63.7 billion raised by the 30 shown, and without it the UK-based share rises to 20%, by our arithmetic.
As we read the two datasets, the share holds across definitions: 26% UK-based in the Dealroom count of $10M+ startups and 25% in the Evertrace count of 112 recent launches reported by tech.eu, by our arithmetic.
Royal Academy of Engineering, 9 November 2026
“However, only 15 of these new companies are based in the UK.”
Three Implications
FOR UK POLICY The report says UK investors provide 59% of early-stage capital but only 21% of later-stage funding.
FOR THE UK-BASED SEVEN Isomorphic Labs ($2.7B raised) and Ineffable Intelligence ($1.1B) are the two largest UK-based companies in the chart.
FOR INVESTORS ABROAD The 23 companies shown as founded abroad raised $58.2 billion, by our arithmetic from the chart.
The framework says: “The transformer is a commodity now; what changes between paradigms is where intelligence accumulates and who can capture it.”
As we read it, the report applies the same question to places rather than companies: it says the risk is talent, technologies and capabilities that accumulate elsewhere. The framework does not discuss DeepMind alumni or the UK.
What Is Not Established
We read the Royal Academy’s release and the chart in Seb Johnson’s post, not the full report, so the country split of the 42 non-UK companies and the total raised by all 57 are not in what we read. The dollar figures here cover only the 30 companies the chart shows.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
The Great Convergence of Capital, Power, and Geopolitics
This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a supply story, and last week as a credit story. This week it was priced as a permission story, and the answer arrived as a cost, not a ban.
Of 57 DeepMind alumni startups that have raised $10 million or more, 15 are UK-based, the Royal Academy of Engineering’s report says, and the seven UK-based companies among the 30 shown hold 9% of their combined funding, by our arithmetic.
A note on sourcing. We read the Royal Academy of Engineering’s release on the State of UK Deep Tech 2026 report in full and transcribed the report’s DeepMind alumni chart from the image in Seb Johnson’s X post; the company figures are as printed there, and the sums and shares are ours. The Evertrace figures are as reported by tech.eu.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
