In his keynote speech at London Tech Week last month, prime minister Rishi Sunak pitched the UK as a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI). Listening in were representatives of some of the biggest names in tech, including Google DeepMind and HSBC Innovation Bank. 

Quantexa, a British decision intelligence company, was also in the stands, and proved particularly receptive to Mr Sunak’s message. Just a few weeks after his speech, the company announced a $105m investment in a London-based AI innovation centre, which is expected to create 170 highly skilled jobs by 2027. 

Founded in 2016, Quantexa harnesses technologies such as entity resolution, network analysis and AI to deliver data analysis services to clients in the banking, insurance and public sectors. 

The company became the first British ‘unicorn’ of 2023 in April, when it raised $129m in a series E funding, putting the company’s overall valuation at $1.8bn. Part of that money is now being deployed to boost its team in London and overseas. 

Why London? 

Vishal Marria, the company’s CEO and founder, tells fDi that the UK’s longstanding commitment in AI and machine learning makes it a natural springboard for the development of its AI-based solutions. 

“There are a number of great universities and apprenticeships here in the UK that allow us to bring some of the best talent into the company and into our partner ecosystem,” he says. 

According to research by Sequoia Atlas, London is home to 20,000 engineers with AI expertise — more than double any other European city. 

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Data and clients, and nimble regulation 

London also remains Europe’s largest financial hub. This comes handy for Quantexa for two reasons: access to data and access to clients. 

Not only do corporate clients have large amounts of data, they also have “some of the hardest questions” to answer using such data, he says. Those questions touch on areas like know your customer, anti-money-laundering, fraud, data management and customer intelligence.

It is in complex areas such as financial crime detection that Quantexa’s approach comes into its own. By unifying and contextualising data, then applying the best in machine learning and AI, Mr Marria claims his company has increased the capacity of its clients to detect financial crime by more than 200% and decreased false positives by up to 90%. That means “catching more, but impacting less”, he says. 

Mr Marria also seems to support the UK’s approach to regulation, which has been seen as less heavy-handed and more flexible than that of the EU. The proposed EU regulation on AI has already stirred the discontent of some of the bloc’s largest companies, with 150 executives sending a letter to the EU parliament to lobby against the proposed legislation. 

“It’s very important that we get the right balance between regulation versus innovation,” Mr Marria says. On the one hand, “[too] much tight scrutiny ... stifles innovation”. On the other, “transparency in data lineage is critical to operationalising AI and machine learning when it comes down to a highly regulated market.” 

What about humans? 

The long-term impact of AI on the job market remains a major source of uncertainty, though. Earlier in July, the OECD estimated that more than a quarter of jobs in its member countries rely on skills that could be automated through AI. 

However, AI’s reputation as a job destroyer may be compounded, at least to some extent, by the job creation of AI companies. 

Quantexa’s AI Innovation Centre will create 170 new jobs, mainly data engineers and data scientists. For Mr Marria, “there is a whole process here of reinventing yourself when it comes to making the best of AI in your [day job] ... because there’s stuff that the machine learning and AI can do, which is far quicker, far more efficient — but how do you take that insight and make those better, trusted decisions?”

The company is also planning to allocate $50m to expand its operation overseas too. According to fDi Markets, AI-related foreign direct investment projects have created 297,481 new jobs worldwide (including almost 11,000 in the UK) since 2016.

“AI is not going to replace humans, it’s going to make them more efficient, more effective, and in a highly regulated market, it is fundamental that humans are in the loop to ensure AI is being used in the correct manner,” Mr Marria concludes.