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Spotlight | Some of Scotland’s Most Interesting AI Startups
DIGIT has highlighted some of the most interesting AI startups cropping up across Scotland.
If you haven’t heard, AI is all the rage.
Artificial intelligence seems to be everywhere, from automation threatening to replace a swath of jobs, to social media deepfakes, cyber-threats, and advancing chatbots, ChatGPT and other large language models have fundamentally changed the way people interact with the online world, seek information, and create.
It’s brought up profound debates and questions about what constitutes original creation, what are we really seeking to get out of society, and how will automation and AI affect the future of work?
As more and more companies integrate AI tools into their existing business models, a continuous flow of startups boasting their own unique AI systems and applications have cropped up, battling it out for space in the ever-expanding AI landscape.
DIGIT has therefore taken the time to highlight just some of the many Scottish AI startups that have emerged onto the market int he last few years.
9 of Scotland’s Most Interesting AI Startups
1. Malted AI
While large language models may be all the rage, smaller models can be tailored to specific needs without the hefty price tag of large language models when it comes to energy consumption and data usage.
That’s where Malted AI comes in. Founded in 2023, this Edinburgh-based company “distils” AI models using domain specific knowledge to create bespoke, small language models designed for smaller enterprises and more specific use cases. These focused models can then scale in production.
Malted AI is currently a small company, but according to their LinkedIn, their headcount has increased by 25% in the last six months.
Their focused AI solutions could be ideal for smaller businesses looking to enhance their AI abilities, allowing customers to search and analyse domain databases, as well as generate accurate reports.
2. TAISK
TAISK puts AI into everyday tasks for teachers and businesses. Founded in 2023 in Edinburgh, the company connects companies and schools with the right AI tools for them, using foundational models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and more, taking the ideas of teachers and businesses into fruition.
From developing lesson plans to customer service, curating homework tasks and pop quizzes, the company seeks to put a positive spin on AI in education.
Their TAISK Labs platform connects their AI experts with enterprises to discover their specific AI requirements and create tailored solutions. For teachers, TAISK can help generate lesson plans, worksheets, colouring pages, and tests.
With TAISK, founder Alexander Fahie hopes that AI can be part of the solution to education’s many struggles amid a funding and teacher shortage.
3. Wedo.ai
Wedo offers AI-powered solutions to modern fintech issues, allowing businesses to manage and hold multiple currencies, make international payments easily, automate invoices and manage contracts.
Not just confining itself to fintech, Wedo AI also fills marketing, sales, and delivery purposes.
The startup is also built on blockchain technology to cater to a remote and hybrid international workforce.
Their AI technology is geared towards efficiency in job-matching, workflow automation and optimisation, and improved decision making.
Wedo also leverages the blockchain for security and transparency in transactions, using the innovative new-age technologies to offer an integrated finance, marketing, and business management platform for larger and smaller companies alike.
The female-founded startup began operations in 2021, and has outfits in Palo Alto California, as well as in Glasgow, London, and Berlin. In 2022, Wedo’s founder Indiana Gregg raised $2.3 million in a seed round, breaking many a glass ceiling for female tech founders, who have often been left out of the headline-making AI funding rounds.
4. Net AI
A spin out of the University of Edinburgh, Net AI utilises AI for the telecommunications and mobile networking industry to drive down energy costs and increase efficiency.
In the cost of living and energy crises, Net AI has increasingly marketed itself as a tool to minimise energy expenditure. Dubbed EnergAIze, the system claims to decrease energy costs by up to 50% by controlling the number of radio or computing systems required for certain network capacities and capabilities.
Net AI also serves mobile networking functionality, with their AI-driven anomaly predictor identifying unusual patterns, identifying potential disruptors before incidents occur.
Their other systems use predictive AI to anticipate short and long term customer perceptions, helping companies better plan deployments.
5. Leap AI
Founded in Aberdeen, this AI automation and manufacturing company focuses on food processing and packaging.
As myriad tasks online continue to be replaced by AI systems, the same continues to occur for manufacturing.
The in-house systems at Leap AI allow packaging and processing jobs to be done at a lower cost, and enables customisation of nearly any repetitive task.
More complicated or specialised packaging systems therefore are able to be swiftly automated and performed using Leap’sAI software and AI-powered robots.
Leap AI focuses on SMEs in the food and beverage industry aiming to provide a more bespoke service to processing requirements using AI.
6. Helpix AI
Helpix AI focuses on customer interactions, using an automated AI system to talk to customers across multiple channels in their own language. The company also specialises in enhancing their customer’s AI capabilities with code-free configuration, enabling the easier merging of domain-specific knowledge into the AI model.
The system also offers continuous learning, so the adopted AI model continually refines and improves itself.
Their chatbot offers omnichannel engagement – it can interact across multiple platforms from social media to messaging apps, and seamlessly adapts responses to the language used by customers.
Founded in 2023, the Edinburgh-based company is still in its earliest stages. Interested parties can join the waitlist to access Helpix AI’s offerings, which did make 3rd Product of the Day on Product Hunt.
7. Bennu.AI
Bennu.AI takes AI, robotics, and automation directly to waste management woes. Their robotic bins sort waste correctly, minimising incorrectly discarded products, increasing the material recycled, and mitigating the amount of waste wrongly going to landfills.
Conceived in 2021, Bennu.AI won Best Tech at the University of Edinburgh Venture Building incubator. From there, the company participated in COP26 and won the Scottish EDGE award for sustainable robotics.
BENNU.AI then produced an alpha and finally a beta version of their smart bin, JANUS, which has capabilities to drain liquids as well as sort different waste material in tandem. The bins even use a low-energy sensor so the bin is only on when it is in use.
Currently, the company is working on getting JANUS prepped for manufacturing, fine tuning the bin to make it less expensive to produce, as well as improving its AI accuracy.
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8. Gigged.AI
It would be inconceivable to produce a list of Scottish AI startups without mentioning Gigged.AI, the Glasgow-based talent management platform.
Using AI, the platform matches companies with freelancers, placing people with the right skills to companies that need them the most.
Gigged.AI also uses AI to create bespoke Statements of Work to explain digital project requirements, whilst matching companies to a range of verified freelancers.
Founded in 2021, the company has received recognition from KPMG as a tech innovator, as well as Scottish Edge Winner, and a Tech Nation Rising Start Regional Winner.
Richard Wilson, CEO and founder of Gigged.AI has also been a proponent for the future of work, and how AI can be integrated to improve hiring practices amid the skills shortage.
9. Inicio AI
Founded in 2020 and a graduate of a University of Edinburgh accelerator programme, Inicio AI offers a bespoke virtual assistant for income and expenditure, helping with debt management and offering improved customer experience.
The debt management service offers a friendly virtual assistant – budgie – to offer customers 24/7 customer support and advice, helping them complete tasks without waiting or judgement.
Their benefits calculator is personally tailored to customers needs, and has built-in benefits calculators to help customers seamlessly calculate their expenditures.
The offering aims to reduce call centre costs and improve overall efficiency. The company’s detailed record keeping also demonstrates proper data governance, keeping people’s documents secure.
