Tracker and UK police recovered 55% more stolen vehicles in 2025, with the recovered vehicles valued at a combined £41.3 million.

The figures set a record for the vehicle recovery company and reflect a 72% year-on-year increase in the value of vehicles it helped police recover.

As a result of its recovery work, 200 stolen vehicles without Tracker devices were also recovered and returned to their owners. The company attributed the results to collaboration with police forces, car makers, dealer groups and insurers.

The data suggests vehicle crime is widening, with lower-value cars featuring prominently in recoveries. The largest share of stolen cars recovered last year were valued at between £10,000 and £20,000, while one in 10 were worth less than £10,000. Only 4% were valued at more than £50,000.

This contrasts with the public focus on prestige vehicle thefts and suggests organised criminal groups are targeting a broader range of models. Tracker said profits from stolen vehicles help fund other criminal activity and warned motorists that no vehicle should be considered safe from theft.

Recovery Rates

Tracker says it remains the only stolen vehicle recovery specialist formally supported by all 43 police forces in the UK. Most police patrol vehicles and all police helicopters carry its detection units, which identify stolen vehicles through a VHF signal.

It says this approach delivers a 95% recovery rate, with half of stolen vehicles found within four hours and 80% returned to owners within 24 hours.

The broader picture is mixed. Tracker cited DVLA data obtained through a Freedom of Information request showing an 11% year-on-year fall in vehicle theft across England and Wales in 2025. However, theft levels remain 48% higher than a decade earlier.

At the same time, recovery rates for vehicles without dedicated protection remain low. According to Tracker, police recovered only 13% of stolen vehicles between 2022 and 2025.

More than 90,000 vehicles were reported stolen in 2025, based on the DVLA figures it cited. Those thefts ranged from motorbikes and vans to prestige cars and agricultural machinery.

Models Targeted

The most stolen vehicle in the DVLA data for 2025 was the Yamaha NMAX scooter, followed by the Ford Transit 350. Other frequently stolen vehicles included the Toyota Hilux, Honda WW 125-A, Nissan Navara Tekna, Ford Fiesta Zetec and Mercedes-Benz Sprinter models.

Tracker’s own recoveries are heavily weighted towards premium marques, including BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and Toyota.

Clive Wain, Tracker’s head of police liaison, outlined the mix of vehicles his team sees in recovery work.

“Our stolen vehicle recoveries are dominated by thefts of premium car brands, such as BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and Toyota. However, the intelligence we gather from our partner network tells us that the Toyota RAV4, Ford Puma, Nissan Juke and BMW X5 are firm favourites amongst thieves,” Wain said.

Recoveries also peaked around the March and September registration plate changes. More than £4 million worth of vehicles were recovered around the spring plate change alone.

Crime Networks

Tracker linked vehicle theft to dismantling operations and the illegal sale of used parts. Working with police, it said it uncovered and shut 78 illegal chop shops last year, leading to 147 arrests.

“Vehicle theft can be financially and emotionally devastating for motorists. That’s why we continue to forge industry partnerships and work tirelessly with U.K. police to recover stolen vehicles to their owners,” Wain said. “Together, not only are we stopping motorists’ prized possessions from being sold on or shipped abroad, but we are also stopping them from being stripped for their parts. The illegal harvest and sale of quality second-hand parts have become a lucrative revenue stream for OCG’s operating on the black market. Last year, Tracker and the police uncovered and closed 78 illegal chop shops, resulting in 147 arrests, which was another record year.”

Mark Kameen, lead for the National Vehicle Crime Reduction Partnership, said the results reflected closer intelligence-sharing between law enforcement and private sector organisations.

“An overarching ambition when launching the National Vehicle Crime Strategy in 2024 was to enhance intelligence between law enforcement and the private sector to help tackle organised vehicle crime. And we are actively achieving our goal. The record number of stolen vehicle recoveries by Tracker and the U.K. police also underlines this. We will continue to build on this success by working closely with all of our partners and members, sharing expertise to ensure we all play a vital role in tackling vehicle crime across the country,” Kameen said.

Distology has signed a distribution agreement with Snyk covering the UK, DACH and Benelux markets.

The deal gives Distology’s resellers and partners access to Snyk’s AI Security Platform and Agent Security products, as demand rises for tools that address risks in software development and AI-assisted coding.

It also expands Snyk’s reach across Northern Europe through Distology’s channel relationships, with local support and regional coverage included in the agreement.

Security teams are facing a shift in how software is produced. As organisations use AI tools to generate code faster, they are also dealing with more application vulnerabilities and open-source risks that are harder to control if discovered late in the development cycle.

Snyk’s products are designed to move security earlier in the process by helping developers identify and fix issues while writing code, rather than waiting until software is closer to release.

For Distology, the agreement adds application and AI security to a portfolio focused on cyber suppliers and services. It plans to support partners with training, technical assistance and sales support, alongside enablement for services such as implementation, DevOps and consultancy.

Sarah Geary, Chief Commercial Officer at Distology, said the company is seeing stronger demand from organisations that want to embed security earlier in software development.

“We’re seeing growing demand from organisations that need to secure applications earlier in the development process.

“AI is accelerating software development, and customers need a security solution that can keep pace. By bringing Snyk into our portfolio, we’re giving our partners a way to step into that conversation. This isn’t a transactional sale. It’s about helping customers rethink how they build and secure applications from the outset, which opens the door to higher-value services,” said Geary.

Channel Focus

The partnership is part of Snyk’s channel strategy, centred on working with a smaller number of specialist partners that can provide technical and pre-sales support around its products.

Snyk serves more than 4,800 customers globally and has been building its position in application security as AI becomes more embedded in enterprise software development.

Tom Evetts, Vice President Sales and General Manager at Snyk, said many organisations are trying to balance faster software delivery with the need to maintain security oversight.

“Speed of development is important for organisations to maintain their competitive edge,” said Evetts.

“But they know it can’t happen at the expense of security, which is why demand in our space is so strong and why we wanted to appoint a partner we trust to support our channel in the right way.

“We’re very selective about who we partner with. For us, it’s about working with a company that understands the cybersecurity sector and can support partners with technical depth, strong presales and local-language capability,” he added.

Market Demand

The partnership reflects a broader shift in the security market as software supply chains become more complex and AI tools become standard across development teams. That has increased interest in products that help engineering teams address vulnerabilities during coding rather than relying only on later-stage testing.

Distributors and resellers are also looking for areas where they can attach services and consulting work, particularly in segments where customers need support to change internal development and security practices.

The agreement is intended to help partners build offerings around application and AI security rather than simply resell licences.

“This is about giving partners access to areas of the market where they can add real value,” said Geary.

“Application and AI security is clearly one of those.”

Qognetix has been named a Regional Finalist in the UK StartUp Awards 2026, selected from more than 2,100 startup entries nationwide.

The Birmingham-based deep-tech business is also raising GBP £725,000 to expand its team and continue developing what it describes as an execution-layer platform for intelligent systems.

Qognetix is targeting a part of the artificial intelligence stack that receives less attention than model development. It argues that the industry has invested heavily in models and inference, while paying less attention to how intelligent behaviour is executed, monitored, and constrained once systems operate in live settings.

That gap becomes more significant as AI tools move from trials and demonstrations into operational environments, where organisations want clearer oversight of how systems behave. In response, Qognetix is developing infrastructure designed to make intelligent behaviour more controllable, inspectable and reliable after inference.

Funding Push

The current fundraising effort is intended to support hiring, platform development and the next phase of commercial growth. Qognetix has not disclosed investors in the round, but said the money would strengthen both technical development and market readiness.

This positioning sets it apart from many AI startups focused on model performance or application layers. Instead, the business is building software and controls that govern how AI-driven actions are executed once a system is deployed.

That focus comes as businesses and public institutions place greater emphasis on governance, auditability, and the reliability of AI use. In sensitive or operationally demanding settings, the key question is often not whether a model can generate an answer, but whether the resulting behaviour can be observed, limited and traced.

Qognetix is developing its platform for environments where the cost of unpredictable system behaviour is higher. It identifies runtime control, inspectability, bounded behaviour, deployment reliability and governance-oriented execution infrastructure as core areas of work.

Market Debate

The broader AI debate has begun to move in a similar direction. As more systems enter practical deployment, questions around execution and oversight are becoming more prominent for buyers, regulators and operators.

That shift has created room for companies to build infrastructure between the application layer and the raw model layer. These businesses are trying to solve for operational trust rather than model novelty, especially in sectors where decision pathways need to be understood after a system goes live.

Nic Windley, founder and chief executive officer of Qognetix, linked the award recognition to that broader market view.

“It’s encouraging to see early recognition for the direction we’re building in. We believe the next major challenge in AI is not just what a model can infer, but how intelligent behaviour is controlled and deployed in real-world systems,” he said.

Windley said much of the difficulty emerges only when AI moves into production and must operate within practical limits.

“A lot of the conversation around AI still centres on the model itself, but in production settings, the real challenge is often what happens when that intelligence has to operate reliably, safely, and within defined constraints. That is where we think execution-layer infrastructure becomes increasingly important.” 

The UK StartUp Awards were created to recognise newer businesses from around the country. Qognetix’s regional finalist status places it among a group of emerging companies selected from a large national field of entrants.

For Qognetix, the recognition comes as it tries to turn a technical thesis into a commercial business. It is building for a market in which demand for governance and control tools may rise alongside broader adoption of AI systems in live environments.

“We see this as part of a wider shift in the AI market. As deployment becomes more critical, the infrastructure for execution, control, and governance becomes increasingly important. That is the problem space we are building for,” Windley said.