'Sovereignty isn’t a slogan; it’s an infrastructure choice, and this investment allows us to move faster on that mission': £10m injection propels Belfast firm into the AI big leagues

Belfast AI firm Whitespace has completed a £10 million Series A funding round, securing major new institutional backing to scale its UK-built sovereign AI platform and accelerate its expansion across Defence, National Security and other high-assurance regulated sectors.

The raise, which totals $13 million (£10m), brings in fresh investment from Beach Equity and White Cloud alongside earlier commitments made during the firm’s pre-Series A phase. The consolidated funding significantly boosts Whitespace’s capacity to meet rapidly growing demand for secure, sovereign AI solutions designed and engineered within the UK.

Founded in 2015 by Paul Jenkinson and Andrew McCartney, Whitespace began as a small Belfast team delivering bespoke AI tools for Defence and enterprise clients.

A decade on, the firm has grown into one of the UK’s leading innovators in sovereign AI — developing technology tailored for the country’s most sensitive and high-risk environments. Its systems now support live operations across multiple Defence and National Security missions.

Central to this growth is Collective, Whitespace’s flagship AI operating system. Built entirely in the UK, Collective is engineered for environments where security, trust and full infrastructure control are paramount. The platform enables organisations to build, deploy, govern and scale AI safely across cloud, edge, on-premise and fully air-gapped systems — capabilities increasingly required across Defence, critical national infrastructure and other tightly regulated sectors.

CEO Paul Jenkinson said the investment marks a pivotal moment for the company: “This raise gives us the capacity to deliver sovereign AI capability at national scale — building technology that the UK can trust, control and deploy safely across its most critical systems.

“Sovereignty isn’t a slogan; it’s an infrastructure choice, and this investment allows us to move faster on that mission.”

The new funding arrives as Whitespace gains growing recognition on both sides of the Atlantic.

Tommy O’Sullivan, managing partner at Beach Equity, said the company’s momentum reflects its “market-leading knowledge and product design,” adding: “It is rare to see a small business command such respect from its Big Tech partners.”

White Cloud’s incoming board director Paul Skipworth said Defence and regulated organisations face “unprecedented challenges” requiring AI that performs under complex conditions.

“All this has created a huge opportunity for agile UK-based defence AI companies such as Whitespace,” he explained. “It is a privilege for us to support and work with the world-class Whitespace team as the company scales to serve its sovereign UK and international clients.”

The funding will support accelerated product development, strengthen engineering and delivery teams at Whitespace’s Belfast headquarters, expand customer success programmes, and add new leadership expertise as the company enters its next phase of scale.

Whitespace is already embedded within UK Defence and is one of only four SMEs awarded an enterprise agreement by the Ministry of Defence— an MoD framework designed to streamline procurement and collaboration with trusted UK technology partners.

Reflecting on the company’s trajectory, Paul added: “We started as a small team of problem-solvers in Belfast who believed that the UK should own its own AI infrastructure. Ten years later, that belief has become reality — our capabilities are now live, and this investment takes us from pioneering to scaling.”

With ambitions that extend toward long-term advancements in trusted superintelligent systems, Whitespace aims to position the UK at the forefront of sovereign AI—strengthening national resilience while ensuring that future AI augments, rather than replaces, human decision-making.

The Series A raise firmly positions the Belfast company for its next stage of growth and cements its role as a key contributor to the UK’s secure and globally competitive AI ecosystem.