Scale Space

15 PIONEERING START-UPS SELECTED FOR AI ACCELERATOR BASED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH’S BAYES CENTRE, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH SCALE SPACE

• Entrepreneurs creating AI powered robotic gloves, personalised medicine, through to ‘x-ray vision’ software are some of the 15 trail blazing organisations selected for the new artificial intelligence (AI) Accelerator Programme at the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre in partnership with Scale Space.
• Mark Sanders, Executive Chairman, Scale Space has been appointed to the new Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) post at Edinburgh University to support the Accelerator Programme and Data Driven Entrepreneurship.
• Accelerator Programme and the EIR post strengthens links between academia and the private sector.
• Programme participants will benefit from expertise from the Bayes Centre at the University of Edinburgh, Scale Space and its community of tech companies.
• The Accelerator runs from 18 February to 15 July 2021.

Fifteen start-ups addressing a wide range of pressing global, business and health issues have been selected from applicants across the world to join the Post-Covid AI Accelerator. The accelerator is being delivered by the Innovation Group at the Bayes Centre, in conjunction with Edinburgh Innovations, the University of Edinburgh’s commercialisation service, and in partnership with Scale Space, the UK’s new community for scaling businesses, it was announced today.

The six-month AI Accelerator Programme, based at the Bayes Centre, starts on 18 February and runs until 15 July 2021. It aims to help pioneering AI start-ups with high growth potential to scale globally so they can go on to become world-leading companies, bringing jobs and economic benefit to Edinburgh and the region.

The cohort has been selected from 86 applicants worldwide and follows three previous Bayes accelerators cohorts, which saw 29 companies raise significant investment. Each of the successful applicants is addressing a global challenge, many responding to urgent needs in the health and climate change domains. Examples include:

• BioLiberty – has designed an AI-powered robotic glove that strengthens the user’s grip. Grip strength declines as we age and BioLiberty’s glove has the potential to restore independence for millions of people in the UK and globally. It is particularly relevant now when people are living longer, are more isolated and can’t easily get support from friends, family and carers.
• Neeuro – provides personalised home-based digital therapeutics programmes utilising Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology that incorporates machine learning to help ADHD children improve their attention span. The technology has the potential to be applicable to other brain health conditions.
• Reath – uses data analytics to enable businesses to find safe, compliant and scalable solutions for reusing single use items that have been sent to landfill. Reath’s focus is particularly pertinent given issues around single-use PPE and packaging.     
• Data Innovation Al ltd – has created WorkSafeAI that assesses bio-safety risks and optimises mitigations to limit pathogens being transmitted in workplaces, thereby helping to protect the health, performance and productivity of workers.
• Lenz Labs – has developed technology to help trains get better traction on the rails to make perennial issues like ‘leaves on the line’ a fable of the past.
• Net AI – founded by Dr Paul Patras, Associate Professor in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, is revolutionising cloud-based virtual network management via real time AI analytics. Its cloud-native Microscope solution helps telecom companies reduce costs. 

The AI Accelerator Programme will be delivered from the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre and through Scale Space’s new digital community platform, Scale Space Connect.  

The Bayes Centre is the University of Edinburgh’s home to world leading expertise in AI. Scale Space is backed by Blenheim Chalcot, the UK’s leading digital venture builder and has partnered with Imperial College London to launch the first physical site in White City, London.

A new Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) has been appointed to support the accelerator activity across the University’s Data Driven Innovation (DDI) Hubs (Usher, EFI, Bayes Centre, the National Robotarium and Easter Bush). Mark Sanders, Executive Chairman, Scale Space will work with the founders to address challenges they encounter in building their businesses, and introducing them to mentors, academics and investors who can help accelerate their companies’ development. His entrepreneurial experience includes leading the fintech company TDX to a £200 million exit to Equifax in 2014.

Mark Sanders, Executive Chairman, Scale Space and EIR said: “These successful companies are all bringing innovative thinking and technology to solve problems. The strength of the applicants is a testament to the burgeoning AI industry in Scotland and the University of Edinburgh’s role as a global leader in this area. Scale Space’s track record of helping businesses to scale complements the academic strengths at the University of Edinburgh and together we look forward to supporting the growth of the Accelerator participants. I look forward to helping them to get the most from the Accelerator programme and their engagement with Scale Space.”

Jim Ashe, Director of Innovation, Bayes Centre, College of Science and Engineering said: “In the lead up to COP26, Scotland has the opportunity to take its global focus and demonstrate its leadership in AI, to deliver solutions to climate change, and economic challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We are delighted to have received funding from the Scottish funding council through the DDI programme, to enable these dynamic AI companies to grow through participation in the successful Bayes AI accelerator programme. Bayes offers access to world leading academic knowledge, data sets and the UK’s supercomputing facility, together in an environment of investors, entrepreneurs, academics, students and industrial partners.”

Dr John Lonsdale, Head of Enterprise Services at Edinburgh Innovations, said: “The University of Edinburgh is a world leader in developing AI and Data Driven Innovation. The number and diversity of participants from around the world applying to the Post Covid AI Accelerator is a real endorsement.

“We’re looking forward to working with Mark and the Scale Space team to help the selected companies achieve their fullest potential.

“The chosen entrepreneurs have a fantastic opportunity to learn from scale up experts and leaders of other high growth businesses; helping them to grow their companies globally, contribute to our economic growth and make Scotland an even more attractive destination for inward investment.”

Scottish Government Finance Secretary Kate Forbes MSP said:

“A key enabler of Scotland’s recovery from COVID-19 is digital and technology, so it’s great to see the University of Edinburgh’s Post-COVID AI Accelerator support companies exploring how AI can be developed and used in many areas, such as health, and helping to tackle the climate emergency.

With Scotland’s AI Strategy due to be launched on 22 March, this is an encouraging demonstration of some of the wealth of AI talent already in Scotland, budding international collaborations, and how AI can be used for good. I look forward to following the progress of the Accelerator going forward.”

Professor Mark Logan, Author of Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review said:

"I’m delighted to see the University of Edinburgh’s Post Covid AI Accelerator bringing together start-ups from such exciting product categories. This is also an excellent opportunity to enrich Scotland’s tech ecosystem with an infusion of international businesses, creating high value jobs in Scotland and addressing some of the social and economic issues arising from Covid-19."

 

AI Accelerator participants will benefit from specific and tailored advice as well as group working sessions and conferences to help their businesses grow. Examples include:

• Mentoring on business fundamentals such as securing investment, business modelling and financing, talent management and sales and marketing. 

• Expert advice from industry leaders.

• The opportunity to work at Scale Space for the London residential element, Covid rules permitting. This will include the opportunity to meet Scale Space businesses and benefit from networking and insight events in Scale Space White City. 

• Access to Scale Space Connect, the Scale Space digital community, for the duration of the programme. This will provide participants with access to knowledge banks and business growth services as well as the opportunity to exchange ideas with other participants in community forums.  

The 15 companies will each receive a £7,500 grant from the Scottish Funding Council through the Data Driven Innovation (DDI) scheme.

The Programme will also be supported by NILE. NILE is a multi-talented strategic design team, headquartered in Edinburgh, distributed worldwide. NILE works with multinationals to the start-up next door, to discover, innovate and design better ways to connect with people amidst the complexity of the world today.

 

End

 

Press Contacts

A list of all 15 companies including their location, and a summary of their business is included below.

Interviews / further details of the Accelerator participants can be arranged.  Please contact the team at Kallaway to arrange:

Kallaway

William Kallaway / Katie Blake / Ellen Mann

ScaleSpace@kallaway.com

Mobile: 07769 347 881 / 07867 335 242

 

AI Accelerator Programme enquiries

Katy Guthrie

07900 248 337

Katy.guthrie@ei.ed.ac.uk

  

Notes 

AI technology has the potential to transform industries delivering positive impacts for humans through a wider range of innovation areas, including Financial Services, Health Tech, Clean Tech, Legal Tech and AI for Good.  As part of Edinburgh Innovations’ mission to support entrepreneurship, the programme seeks to work with new AI start-ups with high growth potential who: 

• Offer next-generation solutions using AI technologies that are better, safer and cheaper than existing products.
• Are using innovative techniques to solve a known problem.
• Can make a difference now - ready to Scale within the next 6 months.
• Open to all – local and international companies.

Accelerator applicants have access to: 

• A £7.5k grant
• Membership to the state-of-the-art Bayes Centre and Data Driven community
• A dedicated Accelerator Manager and 1-2-1 support
• Access to the University’s top academic and commercial expertise
• Links to investors, partners, mentors and business coaches through partnership with Scale Space - including in London
• A place in Edinburgh’s community of like-minded entrepreneurs
• Pipeline into Engage Invest Exploit 2021 - Scotland’s premier investment showcase event
• A tailored programme for AI scale-ups - access to open-source data platforms
• Access to recruit Edinburgh’s top data science talent

Accelerator: Summary of applicants and selected cohort

• 86 applications were received in total from 16 countries:
  • 33 Scottish (21 Edinburgh based)
  • 29 UK (No Scotland)
  • 10 Europe (Switzerland, Spain, Poland, Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Macedonia, Ireland, Italy)
  • 14 Rest of the World (Japan, Singapore, Canada, Iran, Cameroon)

Fifteen companies were selected. These include 11 from Scotland, three from England one Singapore. Of the 15, two are start ups led by University of Edinburgh scientists. [Full list of companies with summaries below].

Bayes Centre (www.ed.ac.uk/bayes)

The Bayes Centre is the University’s innovation hub for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. The technical strengths brought together in Bayes build on world-leading academic excellence in the mathematical, computational, engineering, and natural sciences in the University’s College of Science and Engineering.

The Bayes Centre offers a new kind of collaborative, multidisciplinary proving ground where we develop innovative technological solutions for the benefit of society. We have a community of over four hundred internationally recognised scientists, outstanding PhD students, leading industry experts and innovation support professionals, working together across disciplines and sectors to advance data technology and apply it to real-world problems.

Data science education, tech entrepreneurship, and industrially driven, multidisciplinary research and design are the core pillars of our strategy to boost the University’s impact across the city, region, nationally, and internationally through new activity that complements the existing strengths of our community. 

Working in partnership with Scottish Enterprise, the Bayes Centre is part of the Data-Driven Innovation (DDI) Programme within the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal.  It collaborates closely with other DDI hubs, the Edinburgh Futures Institute, the Usher Institute, the National Robotarium, and Easter Bush.

Edinburgh Innovations is the University of Edinburgh’s commercialisation service. We lead the University’s activities in industry engagement and business development, enterprise support for students and staff, and the identification, management and commercialisation of University intellectual property.

Scale Space (www.scalespace.co.uk)

Scale Space, created by Blenheim Chalcot, the UK’s leading digital venture builder, in 2020 is an entirely new concept that brings Blenheim Chalcot’s expertise together with world leading universities to create a new community for scale-ups to help them grow faster and stronger.  Blenheim Chalcot has partnered with Imperial College London to launch Scale Space’s first physical site on the White City Innovation District, London.

Scale Space is a growth community, connecting businesses together for mutual benefit, knowledge sharing and to help them draw on the specific skills and expertise within Blenheim Chalcot and its university partners. This is delivered via a structured range of services accessed within the building or online. 

Scale Space’s first wing opened in July 2020 and fully let to more than 20 businesses and over a 1,000 staff, excluding Imperial College staff and students.  Example companies already in Scale Space include:   

• Agilisys – leading provider of cloud, IT, and digital transformation services in the UK, as well as the technology partner for the States of Guernsey.
• Avado – A professional academy helping companies enable real change through interactive learning experiences.
• DNAe – the first true point-of-need sequencing company revolutionizing clinical diagnostic tools.
• Koodoo – The digital platform transforming the mortgage industry. 
• Modulr has recently raised a total of £63m, including a recent £9m investment from PayPal Ventures.  Modulr enables digital businesses and software platforms across lending, banking, fintech, travel, employment services and accounting to easily embed and build new payment products and services within their customer journey.
• Second Nature has raised a fresh $10 million in Series A funding. The company provides an easy to follow programme used by the NHS and public for long term behavioural change and sustainable weight loss.
• Salary Finance – Socially responsible employee finance.

Scale Space Connect enables its community of member businesses to come together, exchange ideas and access a portfolio of knowledge-related services. They include:

• A scale-up community
• A network of venture builders, academics, researchers, innovators and scale up experts
• Expert know-how and content relating to accelerating business growth
• Exclusive masterclasses, workshops and events for members
• Specialist support services from Scale Space partners 

Blenheim Chalcot (https://blenheimchalcot.com/)

Founded and run by entrepreneurs, Blenheim Chalcot is the UK’s leading venture builder. Working alongside company founders, Blenheim Chalcot supports its ventures from startup to scale to exit, giving them access to the global networks and services they need to grow.

This support is bolstered by the innovative partnerships Blenheim Chalcot forges with big businesses. Its digital expertise helps its ventures be more agile, while its partners' global scope helps them scale faster.

Blenheim Chalcot has built over 40 businesses in a variety of sectors, including technology, financial services, education, travel, software, sport and media. Working with entrepreneurs and co-founders, it continues to create and build businesses in these sectors, often from the ground up.

 

The Scottish Government

The Scottish Government is committed to developing an AI strategy to help ensure that Scotland maximises the potential economic and social benefits of AI, and sends a strong signal to the world about our ambition.  

The strategy will set out a vision for AI in Scotland, the principles that we will adopt to guide our work towards realising this, and the actions that we will take to develop and strengthen Scotland’s AI ecosystem over the next five years.

The strategy will be launched on 22 March 2021. More details can be found on the strategy website https://www.scotlandaistrategy.com/.

 

Summary of businesses accepted onto the Accelerator Programme

 

Company Name	Sector	Location	Year founded	Overview
Actelligent (Scotland) Company Limited.	Fintech	Scotland / Hong Kong	2018	Actelligent (Scotland) Company Limited uses a differentiated Thematics + Factors hybrid approach to help investors ‘act intelligently’ in every stage of the investment process via AI technologies to identify new investment ideas, analyse sentiment signals of companies and time the market.
BioLiberty	Healthtech	Edinburgh	2020	BioLiberty has designed an AI-powered robotic glove that strengthens the user’s grip. Hand weakness can be the result of MS, Stroke, Arthritis and many other conditions (100,000 UK citizens suffer from Stroke very year [1&2]) BioLiberty’s glove has the potential to restore independence for millions of people in the UK and globally.  This is particularly relevant now as people are living longer and cannot get support from friends and family.
Data Innovation.AI Ltd	Healthtech / Smart Buildings	Edinburgh	2020	Data Innovation.AI Ltd have created WorksafeAI to mitigate COVID and other workplace transmissible infections. WorkSafeAI is an AI-driven bio-safety assessment tool. A WorksafeAI designed building will reduce the opportunities for infection to spread within the occupants and significantly improve their Health & Wellbeing and the sustainability of the facility.
iLoF	Healthtech	Oxford	2019	iLoF is working to enable a new era of personalised medicine, by using AI to build a cloud-based library of diseases biomarkers and biological profiles. Supported by leading institutions like Microsoft Ventures and Mayfield Fund, iLoF is providing screening and stratification tools in an affordable, fast, portable way, saving up to 40% of cost and 70% of the time spent screening for clinical trials
Lenz Labs (Lenz Ltd.)	Mobility	Edinburgh	2019	Lenz Labs has created technology that allows trains to grip the track better, providing predictable traction control to help trains run on time no matter the weather. This will see commuter delay issues like ‘leaves on the line’ become a thing of the past.
MyWay Digital Health	Healthtech	Edinburgh & Dundee	2017	MyWay Digital Health aims to transform chronic disease outcomes globally, through data-driven, cost-effective digital solutions; enabling tailored self-management, decision support and delivery of personalised precision medicine at scale. It builds on a national, award-winning diabetes platform in use across NHS Scotland: My Diabetes My Way.
Neeuro	Healthtech	Singapore	2013	Neeuro - provides personalised home-based digital therapeutics program utilising Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology that incorporates machine learning algorithms to help ADHD children improve their attention span. Additionally, the technology has been incorporated and applied in other brain health conditions
Net AI	Deep Tech	Edinburgh	2020	Net AI is revolutionising cloud-based virtual network management via real-time AI-driven analytics. Our cloud-native Microscope solution helps Telecom companies generate significantly higher profit margins by reducing their CAPEX/OPEX/TCO.
Nomad Energy	ClimateTech / Energy	Edinburgh	2019	Nomad Energy captures and uses data, AI and deep domain expertise to radically improve the energy, carbon and health performance of commercial and industrial buildings
Optic Earth Limited	ClimateTech	Edinburgh	2019	Optic Earth Limited builds software that sees through solid rock, creating 3D images of what lies below the Earth’s surface. Their machine learning optimised technology processes robust images 5-10x faster than conventional approaches. This gives their customers more confidence and insight when exploring for energy, minerals and in renewable applications.
Reath Technology Ltd	ClimateTech	Edinburgh	2019	Reath uses analytics and Business Intelligence tools to enable businesses to find safe, compliant and scalable solutions for reusing single use items that have been typically been sent to landfill. Reath’s focus is particularly pertinent given issues around single-use PPE and packaging.
Sharktower	Management Software	Edinburgh	2020	Sharktower’s intelligent project delivery software helps spot problems before they occur, eliminates manual reporting and gives the business a clear view across all projects – increasing the probability of successful outcomes. Every year organisations waste billions on mismanaged change projects and spend over 30% of their project delivery time chasing data and manually reporting, Sharktower removes this waste. Change is complex enough, but delivering it doesn’t have to be.
Space Intelligence	ClimateTech	Edinburgh	2018	Space Intelligence is innovating in AI satellite data analytics to provide essential information to governments and large companies to help them implment and monitor Nature Based Solutions to climate change.
The Health Data Exchange	Healthtech	London	2015	The Health Data Exchange empowers population sized pools of individuals to aggregate a copy of their medical, behavioural and genomic data from their sources. This single source, event based, longitudinal record can be shared with Doctors , digital therapeutics and researchers.  The Health Data Exchange's AI and Machine Learning tools identify deterministic correlations between medical and non-medical markers, enabling researchers to build optimised cohorts for trials in near real time.
ZEG	Creative Industries	London	2018	ZEG's proprietary 3D AI tech allows eCommerce sellers to get stunning product photos at 1/10th the cost and in 1/100th the time compared to a traditional studio. No need to ship product/ props to a studio. Create product photos virtually in 3D without leaving your desktop.