South West scaleup named one of UK's best tech firms

Exeter-base scaleup digiLab, a Tech South West One to Watch, has been named by Tech Nation as one of the brightest and best early-stage tech companies from all areas of the country.

As one of the winners of Tech Nation’s Rising Stars 5.0 competition, the fast-growing AI company will receive a bespoke package of support, including an opportunity to showcase the company to investors, accelerators, entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, and the UK tech community.

digiLab is developing a machine learning platform for energy, water and aerospace industries. It has been designed to help data science engineers make digital twin models of a physical asset or process; such as an aircraft wing, nuclear fusion reactor or a water treatment process. The news comes in the wake of the Exeter firm being named a Tech South West One to Watch 2023, receiving bespoke support from Tech South West Growth Partners Microsoft, Bishop Fleming, Ashfords, King Recruit, British Business Bank, Program and Skowt Consulting.

In its fifth and final year, the competition received 400 applications in total. Rising Stars is structured to ensure strong regional representation and to counter-balance the traditionally strong London tech scene. This year, 132 City Winners were initially selected from the 400 entrants. After a live pitching round, this was reduced to 33 Regional Winners, three each from the 11 countries and regions of the UK. A semi-final pitch further reduced this to 20 Finalists and of these, 16 were from outside London and the South East.

digiLab was named alongside Purrmetrix, VidiVet, Trumpet, Augnet, Stratigens, BioLedger, IncluTech, OneShot AI and JUST: Access as a winner of this year's competition. The winners have a median raise of £1mn and a total combined raise of £11.8mn. Companies were selected based on their value proposition, competitive advantage, market traction, team experience and potential to scale.

This marks the fifth year anniversary of the inception of Rising Stars and the final one from Tech Nation as the organisation ceases operations on 31st March 2023. Artificial intelligence and deeptech have consistently been the most prominent technology sub-sectors over the last 5 years of the competition, with big data becoming increasingly common over the last two years and mobile apps becoming less common.

Over the past five years, 306 finalists and winners have raised a combined total of £261,678,831. The competition has shone a light on promising companies beyond just London, with 83% of finalists and winners across this five year period hailing from outside the region. Notable alumni include Bottlepay , Selazar, SeedLegals and Spherics which was recently acquired by Sage.