Manchester has firmly established itself as one of the United Kingdom’s most active tech scenes outside of London, with more than 1,600 startups and scaleups that employ roughly 60,000 tech professionals industry-wide. Home to a £5 billion digital ecosystem and Manchester-born success stories like AutoTrader and Matillion, the city supports more than 10,000 digital and tech businesses overall.
Below are some of the up-and-coming startups fueling this growth, spanning everything from AI and cloud software to healthtech and clean energy.
Top Startup Companies in Manchester to Know
- Matillion
- Peak
- THG Ingenuity
- Evergreen Life
- Versori
Top Startup Companies in Manchester to Know
Founded: 2018
Industry: Bioelectronics
Medtech startup QV Bioelectronics develops implantable bioelectronic devices that are designed to improve cancer treatment outcomes. Its flagship platform, GRACE, delivers continuous, precisely targeted electric fields directly to tumours — starting with glioblastoma — to disrupt cancer cell division while sparing healthy tissue. By combining electronics engineering with oncology research, QV Bioelectronics makes it possible for therapy to begin immediately after surgery.
Founded: 2011
Industry: Data integration; Cloud analytics
Matillion is a Manchester-founded data integration and digital transformation company that helps analytics teams move and prepare data for cloud platforms like Snowflake, Databricks and Amazon Redshift. Data engineers use its software to build pipelines within cloud data warehouses to better support projects like more intelligent dashboards and machine-learning models — without heavy custom coding.
Founded: 2017
Industry: Clean energy; Energy tech
UrbanChain operates a decentralized energy marketplace that connects renewable energy generators directly with businesses. Using AI and distributed ledger technology to bypass traditional suppliers, its platform enables real-time trading, simpler transactions and offers clear visibility over pricing and supply to lower costs and increase transparency in energy procurement. The company’s valuation grew tenfold from 2023 to 2024, ranking it third in UK’s fastest growing tech companies.
Founded: 2007
Industry: Biotech
Phagenesis develops neurostimulation technology to treat dysphagia, a swallowing disorder caused by stroke and neurological disease. Its lead product, the Phagenyx Neuromodulation System, uses pharyngeal electrical stimulation to restore the brain’s control of swallowing, enabling faster recovery. Backed by over 30 clinical publications, Phagenesis’ technology has been shown to halve a patient’s time to receive oral nutrition and cut hospital stays by 37 percent.
Founded: 2018
Industry: Cybersecurity; AI
Netacea is a cybersecurity company that protects websites, apps and APIs from automated bot attacks. Its AI models analyze over 144 billion signals every second to distinguish malicious traffic from legitimate users, helping enterprises prevent fraud, credential stuffing and web scraping. Since its founding in 2018, Netacea now defends some of Europe and the United States’ largest brands, maintaining a false-positive rate of just 0.001 percent.
Founded: 2020
Industry: Digital banking
Digital banking startup Algbra offers ethical and Sharia-compliant financial services through a mobile-first platform. Alongside everyday banking features, the app includes tools for budgeting, community giving, savings goals, investment tracking and carbon footprint monitoring. In the span of one year, Algbra’s user base jumped from 5,000 to 25,000 users, according to a report, representing a demand from ethically-minded consumers for more values-driven products.
Founded: 2018
Industry: Legaltech; AI
Summize builds contract lifecycle management software that integrates directly with tools like Microsoft Word, Teams, Slack and Gmail. Its AI-powered platform helps legal and procurement teams create, review and manage contracts without disrupting existing workflows. Using Summize’s technology, clients reported up to 85 percent faster review times.
Founded: 2015
Industry: E-commerce; Retail technology
THG Ingenuity is the technology arm spun out of global retailer THG, providing end-to-end e-commerce infrastructure for direct-to-consumer brands. It combines online storefronts, payments, digital marketing, data analytics and global fulfillment into a single, unified system used by some of the world’s largest household names, including Nestlé, PwC and Coca Cola.
Founded: 2015
Industry: AI; Decision intelligence
Peak develops decision-intelligence software that uses machine learning to solve complex commercial problems like pricing, demand forecasting and inventory optimization. Its platform plugs into a company’s existing data systems, so teams can get actionable insights and deploy AI without having to build a full in-house data science team. Headquartered in Manchester, Peak has grown to work with global Fortune 500 brands, expanding its customer base across North America and Europe in 2025.
Founded: 2022
Industry: Data infrastructure; API integration
Versori is a data infrastructure startup developing a universal API to connect fragmented enterprise systems. Its platform supports ETL, reverse ETL and AI-driven workflows, allowing teams to move, transform and sync data across tools without brittle point-to-point integrations. On average, custom integrations on Versori’s platform are built in just 3.5 days, according to the company’s website.
Founded: 2013
Industry: AI; Customer engagement
ConnexAI is a conversational AI platform that helps organizations handle high volumes of calls or digital interactions. Its platform integrates voice, messaging and CRM data to support contact centers across a variety of sectors, including utilities, telecoms and financial services, allowing teams to take up to 50 times more calls on average, according to its website. Founded in 2013, the company has steadily scaled by focusing on regulated, operationally complex customers rather than consumer-facing tools.
Founded: 2012
Industry: Fintech
Fintech startup AccessPay provides cloud-based financial automation software, connecting enterprise ERP systems directly to banks. This allows its more than 1,000 global clients to streamline payments, gain real-time cash visibility and stay compliant while automating manual processing like so-called “direct debits” and account verifications. Since its founding in 2012, AccessPay has grown to become a core infrastructure provider for mid-sized and large UK businesses.
Founded: 2014
Industry: Healthtech
Evergreen Life provides a digital platform that allows users to manage health records, book appointments, view test results and order NHS prescriptions directly from their smartphones. With more than one million active users, the Manchester-based startup empowers patients to take control of their care while reducing administrative burdens for healthcare providers. Founded in 2014, the B Corp certified platform links to all three major general practitioner systems across the country.
