How many UK companies have “AI” in their name? We counted all 5.7 million (2026 data)

Last Updated on August 6, 2026

Whito analysed the full Companies House register, 5,695,466 companies, snapshot dated 1 August 2026, and counted every company with AI in its name, year by year. Then we did the same for the last hype cycle: crypto, NFT and metaverse. Original analysis of public register data.

In July 2026, a new company with AI in its name was registered in Britain every 110 minutes.

Faster than one every two hours. Around the clock. Including weekends.

Nobody registered a single “metaverse” company all year.

The mistake most people make

Treating a boom as a fact about the economy, when the register says it is also a fact about marketing.

A company name is the cheapest positioning decision a founder ever makes, and the register records every one of them. Which means Companies House is accidentally the most honest hype-meter Britain has. Not what people say about a technology. What they are willing to name their company after.

So we measured it.

What we did

We took the full Companies House Basic Company Data snapshot, dated 1 August 2026. That is 5,695,466 companies currently on the register. For each one we read the name and the incorporation date, and counted names containing “AI” as a word (plus “artificial intelligence” spelled out), by the year the company was formed. Then we ran the same count for the last cycle’s buzzwords. Method details and caveats are at the end, including the ones that matter.

The AI gold rush, in numbers

Companies still on the register with AI in the name, by year of formation:

For years, AI names pottered along at a couple of hundred a year. ChatGPT launched in November 2022. In 2023 the count more than tripled. By 2025 it had grown thirteen-fold. So far in 2026, 1 in every 180 new companies in Britain carries the technology of the moment in its name, against 1 in 1,227 in 2022.

There are now 9,894 AI-named companies on the register. More than six in ten of them are less than nineteen months old.

Two details worth noticing. Almost nobody spells it out: just 48 of 2025’s 3,611 chose “artificial intelligence” over the two letters. And the geography is what you would guess: 42% of AI-named companies formed since January 2025 give a London address, with Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff and Glasgow far behind.

Now the graveyard

Run the same count for the last boom’s vocabulary and the story tells itself.

Every one of those names was registered by someone who believed the word itself was worth something. For a while, it was. Then the money moved, and the name became a date stamp. A company called Metaverse Anything now tells you exactly one thing: when it was formed.

What this means if you run a small business

This is our interpretation of the data, not something the register says. Three practical points.

A name is a bet on a moment. The founders who put NFT in their company name in 2021 were not stupid. They were doing what the AI founders are doing now: borrowing heat from a boom. The register shows how that trade ages. If the technology wins, the word becomes generic and says nothing. If it loses, the word becomes a joke. Either way the name stops working. Name your business after the problem you solve or the place you serve, not the tool you currently use. The tool will change. Your customer’s problem mostly will not.

The AI label now tells you nothing. If you are a small business buying marketing, web or automation services, note that thousands of AI-named suppliers have appeared in under three years. Some will be excellent. But the word in the name is not evidence of anything: it costs nothing to register. Judge a supplier the boring way. Ask what they will actually do, what it costs, what happens if it does not work, and talk to a customer or two.

Booms are loudest at the naming stage. The people renaming themselves for a gold rush are usually selling shovels. When one in 180 new companies is named after a technology, the competitive advantage has already moved from saying the word to doing something specific with it. Structure before scale applies to positioning too: a clear offer for a clear customer beats two hot letters.

The sharp takeaway

Britain is currently naming a company after AI every couple of hours. Britain named 27 companies after the metaverse in 2022, and none this year.

Same register. Same instinct. Four years apart.

Borrow heat from a boom and the boom decides when you cool. Name the problem you solve, and no one can date-stamp you.

Method, definitions and what this data does not say

Source. Companies House, Free Company Data Product (Basic Company Data snapshot dated 1 August 2026, all seven parts, 5,695,466 companies), from download.companieshouse.gov.uk. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Crown copyright. The analysis and interpretation are Whito’s own, not Companies House’s. No individual company is named or identifiable in this article; every figure is a count.

What was counted. Company names containing “AI” as a separate word (for example at a word boundary, so “AI Consulting Ltd” counts) or the phrase “artificial intelligence”. Names where the letters are buried inside another word, in the style of OpenAI, are not caught, so on that front our numbers understate the trend. In the other direction, a small number of matches will be initials or words from other languages rather than a reference to the technology. That background noise existed before the boom, roughly 10 to 55 companies a year in the mid-2010s, and is far too small to explain the rise. The buzzword counts (crypto, NFT, metaverse, blockchain, bitcoin) use the same word-boundary method.

The survivorship caveat, which matters. The snapshot contains companies currently on the register. Companies that dissolved before August 2026 are not in it. So “formed in 2021” here means “formed in 2021 and still registered”, and counts for older years understate the original formations, particularly for boom-and-bust names. The metaverse and NFT figures for 2021 and 2022 are therefore floors: the true peak was higher, which strengthens rather than weakens the contrast. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are close to complete.

Registered is not trading. A company registration is a legal filing, not evidence of a real, trading business. Many registered companies never trade. Nothing in this article says or implies anything about the quality, activity or legitimacy of any company, and the rates shown (“1 in 180”) are shares of register entries, not of active businesses. Companies House registration figures also differ from ONS business statistics, which count VAT and PAYE registered businesses.

This article is general information, not financial, investment or legal advice, and is not guidance on naming any particular business.

Common questions

How many AI companies are there in the UK?

There are 9,894 companies on the UK register with AI in the name (or artificial intelligence spelled out), as of the 1 August 2026 Companies House snapshot. Registration is not proof a company trades, and companies using AI without the letters in their name are not counted.

How fast are AI companies being registered in the UK?

In July 2026, 404 AI-named companies were registered, about one every 110 minutes. In 2026 so far, roughly 1 in every 180 new UK companies has AI in its name.

Did the same thing happen with crypto and NFT names?

Yes, at a much smaller scale. Crypto-named formations peaked in 2021 at 66 and NFT names at 17. Metaverse names peaked at 27 in 2022 and have fallen to zero in 2026 so far.

Should I put AI in my business name?

The register suggests caution. Names borrowed from a boom age with the boom, as metaverse-named companies show. A name built on the problem you solve or the customers you serve does not need renaming when the technology moves on. That is a general observation, not advice on any specific business.

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Whito

Whito exists to stop businesses scaling the wrong way. We focus on structure, leverage, and measurable growth, not noise, not vanity metrics.

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