Investment into UK artificial intelligence firms reached £4.56 billion in the second quarter, according to figures from Beauhurst, as the sector’s fundraising continues to reach new records.

The figure was a 4.1 percent rise over the first quarter, and was nearly three times the £1.59bn raised by AI companies in the same quarter a year earlier, or an 186.8 percent year-on-year increase, Beauhurst said.

“The figure makes Q2 2026 the strongest quarter on record for UK AI investment by amount raised, surpassing the previous high of £4.38bn in Q1 2026,” the analyst firm said.

Across all sectors, Beauhurst has so far tracked 1,070 equity deals for the second quarter, worth £8.01bn in total.

AI companies accounted for about one in four of those deals, with 269 rounds in all, for 57 percent of invested capital.

The total is expected to rise further as unannounced deals continue to be identified in Companies House filings.

Beauhurst managing director Henry Whorwood said the second quarter was a “landmark” for UK AI investment, not only in the scale of investment, but also in the breadth of the companies involved.

“The UK is attracting major investment across life sciences, AI infrastructure, financial services, advanced engineering and enterprise software,” he said.

“AI is now a major driver of the UK private-company market.”

He noted that deal growth has accelerated in the past two quarters, so that there will be “a great deal of interest in what the rest of the year will bring”.

“It is also interesting to note that 80 percent of the total invested into UK AI was raised by just eight AI equity raises, with life sciences and health attracting the most investment by value,” Whorwood said.

Life sciences start-up Isomorphic Labs’ £1.47bn fundraise was the largest by value, with other large deals in the quarter coming from Ineffable Intelligence, data centre firm NScale, PhysicsX and chip start-up Fractile.