Scaling up in the cloud: 6 UK startups unlocking growth through digital transformation

The UK is a hive of innovation and entrepreneurship. In fact, research reveals that the UK startup ecosystem is now worth more than £839 billion ($1.1 trillion), making it the third most valuable startup ecosystem in the world (after the United States and China). 

As well as being a world leader in startup activity, the UK is also at the center of science, technology, and AI advancement. What results is a prosperous ecosystem that enables startups to not only enter the market but scale up at an invigorated rate with the support of cutting-edge tools and platforms. Helping to drive this momentum, since 2023, more than 60% of UK generative AI startups are Google Cloud customers.

That is why Google Cloud is launching a Cloud Startup Hub in London — to drive further investment in the UK as both a startups superpower and an AI leader. The Hub is a community space dedicated to providing startups with networking opportunities and educational resources, and will be a valuable resource in helping businesses in the local ecosystem to navigate their digital transformation journey, and successfully scale up in the cloud. 

This investment in UK startups is driven by a growing appetite among businesses for transformative technologies such as gen AI. A recent global report by Google Cloud on the ROI of generative AI, shows promising momentum among UK businesses; 70% of businesses that have implemented gen AI in production report seeing ROI on at least one use case. This is a major incentive for smaller teams with limited resources, as it demonstrates that a cloud-first strategy, elevated by powerful AI tools is the key to breaking into the market, and making a measurable impact. 

Last month, we also welcomed 30 AI startups — hailing from Europe and Israel and including eight UK startups — to our Google for Startups: AI First Accelerator. The Accelerator program is a 10-week, equity-free program for Seed to Series A startups focused on building AI. The program will help high-potential startups based in Europe and Israel grow with the best of Google through a mix of in-person and virtual activities, Google Cloud credits, one-on-one mentoring, group-learning sessions, and workshops on product design, business growth, and more.

This year’s Google Cloud London Summit will showcase some of the UK’s most inspiring startup success stories. Here are just six of these businesses that are using Google Cloud to streamline innovation: 

OnBuy: AI inspiring a new age in online marketplace 

Having successfully migrated to the cloud, businesses can access the tools they need to grow from a startup to an industry-defining leader. The British online marketplace, OnBuy is one of these success stories, built on the capabilities of the cloud. 

Across the business, OnBuy has used Google Cloud’s infrastructure, including Virtual Private Cloud, Cloud Storage and Cloud SQL to reduce maintenance time, improve customer checkout experiences, and provide retailers with greater flexibility. 

Opening the doors for global expansion, OnBuy’s cloud-based framework has enabled them to experiment with AI and generative AI tools for various applications across the business. For example, the team is exploring how Vertex AI can train a product auto-categorization algorithm to look at new and unseen product titles to predict the category they should be in at scale.

[Want to accelerate your startup journey? Apply now for the Google Cloud for Startups program.]

Spoon Guru: Optimizing food discovery for dietary preferences and allergies

Data management is what the cloud does best, and for small organizations that rely on large volumes of metadata, having access to real-time processing can be transformative for their business growth, and their customers. 

Spoon Guru uses product data from grocery retailers to tag products and even recipes with hundreds of dietary attributes such as ‘nut free’ or ‘gluten free’, helping shoppers with food allergies, intolerances, and other dietary preferences (vegan, high protein, etc) to make more informed shopping decisions. 

Processing 14 billion data points a day on Google Cloud, Spoon Guru uses Google Firestore, Cloud Storage, and BigQuery to store its data, before it is cleaned up, normalized, and modeled on machine learning models that have been built, tested, and trained on Vertex AI. 

Data-driven platforms such as Spoon Guru are defining a new standard in customer service. Within its first year, the startup had signed a major deal with Tesco, and since migrating to Google Cloud, the startup has achieved remarkable growth, solidifying its position in the market. Having escalated its operation to processing 20,000 products per minute, Spoon Guru is reaping the benefits of a serverless and auto-scalable infrastructure.

Veed: Craft professional videos with accessible AI tools 

Beyond data management, building a strong foundation in the cloud also enables businesses to unlock the near limitless capabilities of gen AI. The video editing platform VEED is using Google Cloud Run to manage its infrastructure for both front and backend services so that VEED’s developers can focus on building and deploying new AI features at speed. 

Among these features, VEED has introduced a text-to-video tool that allows users to create professional looking videos from nothing but an idea. Helping to democratize professional video editing, this AI-powered feature uses Gemini 1.5 Pro to source captivating stock video and background music, write a script, and even package the video up with a compelling title. 

Having started its digital transformation journey as a part of the Google for Startups Cloud Program, VEED is an inspiring example of how a cloud-first strategy can take a business from square one to pushing the envelope at the forefront of AI innovation. VEED continues to break new ground for the video industry, now with over 12 million monthly users, ranging from individual creators to 76% of Fortune 500 companies.  

Motorway: Accelerating internal processes to transform the used car market

Tailored AI applications are also being used by startups to drive change behind the scenes. Supported by the cloud, businesses are able to develop and fine tune their own ML models that can streamline internal processes, and automate time-consuming admin tasks. The used car marketplace, Motorway, is another participant of the Google for Startups Cloud Program. Motorway has used this training and consultancy to build an industry-leading real-time vehicle valuation tool.

Google Cloud’s most capable gen AI model, Gemini 1.5, is also being used by Motorway to make marketing used cars more reliable, efficient, and trusworthy. By validating documents such as service history papers, and collating a vehicle’s records in an accessible way, Motorway’s car dealers can be confident that the vehicles they are selling are in verifiable condition. 

Since launching on Google Cloud in 2020, more than 80% of Motorway’s AI projects have made it to production, meaning they have the flexibility to continue exploring emerging technologies, backed by the support of Google Cloud’s infrastructure. 

BioCortex: drug discovery with a cloud-first strategy 

From ecommerce to food labelling, the agile infrastructure of the cloud makes it a universal launchpad for startups, no matter how specialised their corner of the market is. Or how technically advanced.

BioCortex, a biotech startup, has created the first biology emulator to develop more compatible pathways between drugs and bacteria, with the aim of driving drug discovery and the global pharmaceutical industry forward. Each year only 5% of new cancer drugs in development successfully complete their clinical trials, and the journey from hypothesis to validation can be months long. Via a collaboration with Google Cloud, BioCortex is helping to accelerate this process and improve clinical trial success rates. 

Built on Google Cloud’s BigQuery, BioCortex has developed two complimentary platforms, Carbon Knowledge and Carbon Mirror. These platforms use an immense amount of data to uncover hidden interactions between drugs, diseases, and human physiology. Cloud applications such as this go far beyond traditional data modelling and are being used at the cutting-edge of pharmaceutical development.

BioCortex’s migration story is a true testament to the capabilities of the cloud and how it can aggregate even the most complex data sets, to take the complexity out of data management, across every industry and sector. 

AIApply: Landing the right job faster

Personalised AI tools and platforms are having a direct impact not just on businesses but on the wider community. 

AIApply is an end-to-end  job search platform that is using AI to transform the hiring process. The company is using BigQuery and Gemini to not only help job seekers find the right fit with intelligent job matching, but also empowers them to make a great first impression.

AIApply’s all-in-one solution crafts tailored resumes and generates personalised cover letters. To complete the process, job seekers can then utilise AIApply’s mock interview service, which is also powered by cutting-edge AI tools and capabilities. 

With the support of Google Cloud technology, AIApply empowers individuals to navigate every stage of the hiring process with confidence, making career growth more accessible at scale.