UK BUSINESS AI UNIVERSE: Places: East of England: Start-ups

Legal name

Kuano Ltd (site footer)

Founded

2020

Founders

Vid Stojevic — CEO and co-founder; David Wright — CTO and co-founder; Parminder Ruprah — Head of Chemistry and co-founder; Jarryl D'Oyley — Project Manager and co-founder

Chief executive

Vid Stojevic

Chief scientist or research lead

David Wright — CTO

Other leaders

Antonio Benedetti — Executive Chairman (from 13 Jul 2022); Georg Schusteritsch — Senior Quantum Scientist; Will Gerrard — Platform Development Team Lead; Andy Mulvaney — non-executive director (from 24 May 2021); Ted Witek — board member (from 20 Feb 2024); Sunil Shah — non-executive director

Hq

Hauxton, Cambridge (England: East of England), Mill SciTech Park; other_offices: not stated

What it does

Kuano designs drug candidates for enzyme targets by combining quantum-chemistry simulation with AI design. Its platform runs automated quantum and molecular simulations, then uses AI to propose and optimise molecules, from finding hits to optimising leads.

Research focus

Quantum chemistry, molecular simulation and molecular design; transition-state drug design for enzyme targets.

Models and products

Quantum Lens — simulation and modelling platform — not stated; Kuano design engine — AI plus physics-based molecular design — not stated; agent-supported platform — demonstrated in Singapore — 1 Sep 2026

Customers or partners named

CROZ — engineering partner — not stated — https://www.kuano.ai/about/; University of Bristol (Mulholland group) — IRAP research collaboration — 13 Jun 2025 — https://www.kuano.ai/news; Alzheimer's Research UK UCL Drug Discovery Institute — research collaboration — 24 Jun 2021 — https://www.kuano.ai/news/older/; UCL and NQCC — Innovate UK quantum computing feasibility study 2023–25 — https://www.kuano.ai/case-studies

Selected papers

Molecular insight into IRAP activity and inhibition — Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling — 2025 — https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jcim.5c00869; What is the future role of quantum computation in drug discovery? — Emerging Topics in Life Sciences — 2025 — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12599230/; Parallel quantum simulation of large systems on small NISQ computers — npj Quantum Information — 2021 — https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.12087

Funding total as published

£2.8m — as of 12 Sep 2023 — https://www.kuano.ai/news/we-are-delighted-to-announce-the-close-of-our-18m-seed-funding-round-to-accelerate-our-quantum-based-drug-discovery

Rounds found

25 Feb 2021 — pre-seed — amount not stated — o2h human health EIS Fund (lead of consortium) — not stated (new DEAL-LAB-16021); Jul–Aug 2021 — seed — £1m — ACF Investors, o2h Ventures and angels (already DEAL-LAB-4015); 12 Sep 2023 — seed — £1.8m — Mercia Ventures — ACF Investors, Ascension Ventures, o2h Ventures, Meltwind Advisory, angels (already DEAL-LAB-2015 / DEAL-SU-HLT-051)

Awards and programmes

Innovate UK grant — 25 Jun 2020; Creative Destruction Lab Quantum stream graduate — 1 Jul 2021; Innovate UK £540,000 cancer-drug project — 9 Jan 2023; Cofinitive #21toWatch 2024 — 13 Mar 2024

Status now

Trading; showed an agent-supported platform in Singapore and attended Life Sciences Week in September 2026.

Labs Round 8 deep profile (31 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: one source.

Sources

1. kuano.ai/news/we-are-delighted-to-announce-the-c
2. kuano.ai/news/older/
3. kuano.ai/about/

Legal name

Materials Nexus Ltd (per MatNex/Viridien release)

Founded

Not stated (Cambridge spin-out)

Founders

Jonathan Bean — CEO and co-founder; Robert Forrest — CTO and co-founder

Chief executive

Jonathan Bean

Chief scientist or research lead

Robert Forrest — CTO

Other leaders

Richard Tomsett — Machine Learning; David Gunn — Scientific Computing; Freddie Markanday — Platform Science; Carys Allsopp — Product Management; Kristy Agostini — Finance; Georgie Riddle — Operations

Hq

Cambridge (England: East of England) per UKTN 2023; current site states no HQ; other_offices: not stated

Headcount

Not stated (team page lists 25 people, Oct 2026)

What it does

MatNex designs new materials to a customer's specification with AI and physics simulation, then tests them and patents them. Its first focus is magnets that use fewer rare-earth elements, for electric vehicles, wind turbines and data storage; it plans to move into batteries, semiconductors and superconductors.

Research focus

"The critical materials design company"; machine-learned interatomic potentials for magnetic materials; generative design for superconductors.

Models and products

MatNex design engine — first-principles computation plus machine learning — not stated; mMACE (magnetic MACE) — interatomic potential for magnetic materials — 9 Apr 2026; rare-earth-free permanent magnet — AI-designed magnet — reported 19 Jun 2024

Customers or partners named

Viridien — partnership to scale computing capacity (AI, HPC) — 20 Feb 2025 — https://matnex.ai/news/matnex-and-viridien-partner-to-accelerate-ai-powered-materials-discovery; UKAEA — contract for project SHINE — 2 Feb 2026 — https://matnex.ai/news

Selected papers

Equivariant Many-body Message Passing Interatomic Potentials for Magnetic Materials (Ho, …, Tomsett, Forrest, Bean, Csányi, Ortner) — arXiv — 9 Apr 2026 — https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08143; Reinforcement learning expands generative design for superconductors — OpenReview — 26 Apr 2026 — https://openreview.net/pdf?id=Ac24KyyfyP

Rounds found

26 Jul 2023 — seed — £2m — Ada Ventures — High-Tech Gründerfonds, University of Cambridge, MD One Ventures, Michael Eisenberg, angels (already DEAL-LB-090)

Awards and programmes

KPMG Black Entrepreneurship Awards winner — Oct 2023; UKAEA contract (project SHINE) — Feb 2026

Status now

Trading as MatNex; holds a UKAEA contract (project SHINE) from February 2026 and published magnetic-materials modelling work in April 2026.

Labs Round 8 deep profile (31 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: verified (2023 seed: trade plus company news list); trading name and UKAEA contract one source.

Sources

1. matnex.ai/news/matnex-and-viridien-partner-to-ac
2. matnex.ai/news
3. matnex.ai/
4. uktech.news/ai/materials-nexus-2m-funding-202307
5. arxiv.org/abs/2604.08143

Owner or parent

Thomson Reuters (acquired Aug 2024; terms undisclosed)

Founded or opened

2022

Lab director or lead

Not stated (now part of Thomson Reuters)

Other leaders

Alexander Kardos-Nyheim — co-founder; Dr Jonathan Schwarz — co-founder (now Head of AI Research, Thomson Reuters)

Headcount

"15-person startup" when acquired — per Thomson Reuters, Dec 2025 (single source)

What it does

A London start-up that trained large language models for legal work, with a team "drawn from Cambridge, DeepMind, Harvard and MIT". Thomson Reuters bought it in August 2024 to support its CoCounsel assistant. Its team became the core of TR Labs' Foundational Research group, which later built Thomson Reuters' own model, Thomson.

Research groups or focus

legal-domain large language models

Notable outputs

Safe Sign's legal LLMs (unnamed); successor: Thomson model — Jul 2026 (see BIZ-LAB-6004)

Funding or budget as published

Not stated (investors not stated)

Status now

Acquired; the team works as TR Labs Foundational Research inside Thomson Reuters.

Labs Round 8 deep profile (31 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: verified (acquisition: UKTN and Thomson Reuters); founding year one source (UKTN).

Sources

1. uktech.news/ai/thomson-reuters-acquires-uk-ai-st
2. thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/innovation/from-s

Founded

May 2017 (company timeline)

Founders

Daniel Ives — founder and CEO; Brendan Swain — co-founder and CSO

Chief executive

Daniel Ives — from 2017

Chief scientist or research lead

Brendan Swain — CSO

Other leaders

Laurence Reid — non-executive director (from 11 Mar 2025); Jill Reckless — Translation Advisor (from 11 Mar 2025)

Hq

Cambridge (England: East of England), at the Gurdon Institute via the Frame Shift bio-incubator; other_offices: not stated (a North American facilities release exists but could not be opened)

What it does

Shift Bioscience uses AI models of cells (a "virtual cell") and a biological ageing clock to find genes that can safely make old cells behave like younger ones, aiming at medicines for age-related disease. In 2025 it reported a single-gene target, SB000.

Research focus

Cell rejuvenation; generative AI cell simulation combined with a high-throughput ageing clock.

Models and products

AI-powered virtual cell platform — gene-target discovery for rejuvenation — not stated; SB000 — single-gene rejuvenation target — 9 Jun 2025

Selected papers

SB000 preprint (title not captured) — bioRxiv — Jun 2025 — https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.05.657370v1

Funding total as published

£14m — as of Oct 2024 — https://tech.eu/2024/10/15/shift-bioscience-raises-ps125m-to-advance-ai-driven-ageing-research/

Rounds found

Jul 2017 — initial seed — amount not stated — not stated — not stated; 15–16 Oct 2024 — seed — £12.5m — BGF — F-Prime Capital, Kindred Capital, Jonathan Milner (already DEAL-SU-HLT-034 as $16m)

Awards and programmes

Accelerate@Babraham start-up competition winner — May 2019

Status now

Trading; working on its SB000 rejuvenation target after adding a translation adviser and non-executive director in March 2025.

Labs Round 8 deep profile (31 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: one source.

Sources

1. tech.eu/2024/10/15/shift-bioscience-raises-ps125
2. shiftbioscience.com/news/shift-bioscience-identi
3. businesswire.com/news/home/20250311855995/en/Shi
4. shiftbioscience.com/news/