91探花 is excited to announce the winners of our AI45 2026!
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91探花 is proud to announce the winners of our AI45 campaign 2026,听celebrating the most exciting AI companies across the world.
Founded in 2016, 91探花 is the UK鈥檚 best-known and fastest-growing startup and tech news site. This听is where decision-makers, investors and startups of all sizes and nature come to find out the latest developments and trends within the industry.
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See The List
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Top 45 鈥� See Here >>
Top 30 鈥� See Here >>
Top 20 鈥� See Here >>
Top 10 鈥撎�See Here >>
Who Ranked Number 1? 鈥撎�See Here听>>
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Feedback From The Judges
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It was difficult to choose, as every company in the top 50 deserves recognition for the seriousness of their work. They solve expensive, structural problems in construction, finance, healthcare, public services, and AI infrastructure. The standouts for me were ScaleOps in GPU optimisation for AI workloads, Crescendo in agentic customer experience, Buildots, which has redefined construction intelligence, and Dwelly, which pioneered the UK鈥檚 first credible AI-rollup. Equally impressive were the social impact companies: MEDvidi widens US mental health access, ICS.AI transforms UK public services, Greyparrot earned TIME Best Invention 2025 in waste recovery, Excelas tackles education inequality, and Diadia Health builds trustworthy clinical AI.
, Technical Marketing Manager
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There are two key ingredients important to me: big technical ideas and customer proof points. The companies that have an advantage are the ones that go beyond simply building a wrapper or adding AI to a workflow and instead use AI as a core layer for decision-making, governance, infrastructure, or domain-specific execution. DevRev, Luminance, and Bioptimus are companies that combine domain depth and advanced architectures with strong traction. The best entries consistently explain a painful problem clearly, show why AI is essential to solving it, and support the story with hard metrics, deployments, or credibility in regulated industries rather than relying on buzzwords alone.
Shiv听Agarwal, Co-Founder and CEO of Singulr AI
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Working in AI and automation, you see a lot of similar ideas, so it鈥檚 refreshing to see so much diversity in this list backed by a strong commitment to responsible development. The highest-ranked entries stood out because they鈥檙e not trying to take on the world; instead, they focus on solving very specific business problems. Crucially, they also demonstrate how AI can strengthen human values, which is fundamental to how we should approach the design and development of tools. This year鈥檚 entries prove that AI can drive original, impactful solutions that enrich our lives.
Adonis Celestine, Senior Director and Automation Practice Lead, Applause
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This year鈥檚 AI45 entries demonstrate remarkable maturity. The standouts proving measurable enterprise ROI rather than capability alone. DevRev鈥檚 $1.1B valuation, Tricentis鈥檚 $500M ARR, and ScaleOps鈥檚 70-80% GPU utilisation shows what execution looks like at scale. BAND and Featherless.ai are building infrastructure the agentic economy requires. Greyparrot and Recite Me moved me; AI applied with genuine social purpose. The construction tech cohort: Buildots, SmartPM, and Krane 鈥� surprised with real rigour in a notoriously slow-to-adopt sector. The strongest entries translated AI into operational impact rather than treating it as an end in itself. Execution, adoption, and value creation define this year鈥檚 leaders.
Maria Nugroho, AI Enterprise Strategist
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This year鈥檚 entries are a prime example of how AI has moved past the hype and is actually solving real-world problems.听I was also particularly drawn to the companies serving underserved populations. Quinly tackling the devastating seven-year delay in child abuse disclosure, MAGI building a trauma-informed approach specifically for neurodivergent women, and CallieCare stripping away tech barriers for seniors. Thoughtful solutions for people the tech world too often leaves behind.
The healthtech innovations really caught my eye, too. MEDvidi, training its psychiatry AI on 130,000 clinical visits, or Diadia, using causal reasoning to stop medical AI from 鈥渉allucinating鈥� facts. A huge step toward tech we can actually trust with our health.
Beyond the health sector, I was impressed by companies like UnlikelyAI achieving 94.9% accuracy over GPT-5, managing 70.3%, and Buildots鈥� massive construction impact. The true standouts were the ones that didn鈥檛 just look cool, but actually bridged critical gaps with results. It鈥檚 clear AI is shifting from flashy demos to reliable, specialized tools that do the heavy lifting. The future is all about smarter tech that actually works in the wild. If this year was any preview, the next wave of innovation will be something special to witness.
Les-leigh, Content and Marketing Executive at 91探花
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Thank You To Our Judges
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Olga Ukrainskaya, Technical Marketing Manager
Olga Ukrainskaya is a Technical Marketing Manager specialising in AI-powered marketing automation, CRM architecture, demand generation, and data-driven lifecycle marketing. She has deep expertise in building the technical infrastructure that connects marketing execution to measurable revenue outcomes.
Olga is a published author on AI and marketing technology on HackerNoon and other tech media platforms. She is an invited keynote speaker and track owner at industry events, a guest lecturer at Huddersfield Business School, and an expert judge at the 91探花 AI45 Competition.
A strong advocate for women in technology, Olga actively supports the Ladies Who Tech community and mentors women entering and growing in the tech industry through the Women in Tech mentorship programme. She also mentors marketing professionals on CRM and automation through the HubSpot Ecosystem Mentorship Programme.
Shiv听Agarwal, Co-Founder and CEO of Singulr AI
Shiv听Agarwal is a serial entrepreneur and accomplished technology leader with 25 years of experience in cloud computing, networking, and security. He co-founded Arkin Net in 2013, a data center security and operations platform, which was acquired by VMware in 2016. At VMware,听Shiv听served as VP and GM, and helped establish VMware as a leader in network security market. In 2023,听Shiv听co-founded Singulr AI to help enterprises securely adopt, govern, and scale AI.
Under his leadership, Singulr AI has raised $10M in seed funding from Nexus Venture Partners and Dell Technologies Capital and launched an enterprise-ready AI governance and security platform.听Shiv鈥檚 career reflects his passion for building transformative technologies and empowering organizations to embrace innovation responsibly.
Adonis Celestine, Senior Director and Automation Practice Lead, Applause
Adonis is a recognized thought leader in the Quality Engineering and Automation sector. He collaborates with some of the world鈥檚 most innovative organizations to facilitate transformational change in their software development processes. In his role as Senior Director and Automation Practice Lead at Applause, he helps Applause鈥檚 clients to take a customer-centric approach to quality as part of their quality engineering evolution.
A core aspect of his leadership is his strategic vision and ensuring solutions are both technically sound and aligned with broader business goals. Adonis is an accomplished writer and public speaker. He is the author of 鈥淨uality Engineering: The Missing Key to Digital CX鈥� (2022), 鈥淐ontinuous Quality: The Secret of the Pharaohs鈥� (2021), which won the EuroSTAR Software Testing Award, and 鈥淎s the World Turns: A Predictive Test Approach with Machine Learning鈥� (2019).
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Maria Nugroho, AI Enterprise Strategist
An enterprise AI leader, Cambridge graduate, and expert in bridging the gap between technological complexity and scalable commercial value. Maria Nugroho is a driving force behind the UK AI industry鈥檚 journey from pilot programs and marketing demos to real-world solutions with real financial impact delivered at scale. Maria鈥檚 current role at SAP and previous roles with Google and AWS position her at the intersection of technology, market economics, and enterprise change management.
Her specialisation in the commercialisation layer, the missing piece between innovation and impact, stems from a career focused on translating technical capability into commercial value, designing adoption frameworks across hyperscalers, and driving measurable pipeline and revenue impact. Throughout her career at AI and cloud leaders, including Google, AWS, and SAP, she has focused on turning complex AI and cloud technologies into scalable commercial outcomes, placing her at a useful and unique intersection of technology, commercialisation, and enterprise change management: the exact point where the UK AI ecosystem needs leadership.
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Les-leigh, Content and Marketing Executive at 91探花
Les-Leigh is a writer and digital marketing specialist with experience across B2B SaaS, technology, healthcare, recruitment and education. She writes daily on artificial intelligence, startups and emerging technologies, with a particular focus on how AI is reshaping business, creativity and the future of work.
With a background in marketing strategy, content and design, she has worked with startups and established companies in the UK and United States, producing research-driven editorials, features and digital campaigns. Her work centres on analysing the impact of AI across industries, making her a regular voice on innovation and a natural fit for judging AI-led initiatives and competitions.
