The AG Elevate programme will take place over the course of 10 months and is designed to assist high-growth tech businesses in the legal challenges that present themselves as companies begin to scale. 

This year’s cohort is made up of 15 companies and is largely represented by startups focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), which make up a quarter of the cohort.

Of the 15, three Scottish businesses were selected to take part. The first is Legado, an Edinburgh-based data-as-a-service platform which helps firms connect and engage with clients digitally. Legado is a private company which raised £600,000 in seed funding in 2020 and a £50,000 grant from Innovate UK. Last year, the company acquired WonderBill – a bill management service – for an undisclosed amount according to Crunchbase. 

Vectofy is an early stage company which specialises in 3D visualisations of spreadsheets, helping users reduce errors and save time. The last company is Zelim, an Edinburgh-based startup that uses AI to conduct remotely operated unmanned search and rescue operations. After raising a seed round in 2020 for roughly £193.5K, the startup recently raised a further £2.1 million in late 2022, both from its lead investors Kero Development Partners and Aberdeen based I7V according to Pitchbook.

The cohort will benefit from the specialist knowledge from Addleshaw Goddard, such as access to legal documentation and knowledge sources, a series of seminars, and opportunities to collaborate with like-minded professionals within the tech ecosystem. 

The programme has helped nearly 50 high-growth tech businesses since the program first launched in 2017. One of which being Amiqus in 2019, which has since been named the fastest growing business in Scotland at the 2022 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 awards. The company has raised a total of £1.8m in funding across various seed and Venture rounds, according to Crunchbase. 

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Elvan Hussein and David Anderson, partners and co-programme leads at Addleshaw Goddard, commented on the programme, saying: “AG Elevate started life as a programme aimed at the nascent Fintech sector, but in just six years we have seen radical changes in the business landscape as tech has become central to almost every sector of our economy. Generative AI has been the focus of attention this year, but there is so much going on behind those headlines and our new cohort represents a microcosm of that activity.

“This year we also opened the programme up to our international network and the response has been fantastic – we’re delighted to welcome two businesses from Ireland and two from France. In truth, many of these businesses have a global vision and supporting international expansion is a key element the support we can bring to bear.”

The rest of the companies making up this year’s cohort are: Boodil, Cap Energy, Cardemy, EpiCapture, Freightcore, Myma Medical, NEPIOS Pharma, RePro Stream, Run Viable, SymPhysis Medical, Syntonym, and Yaso.