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.

Taboola says DeeperDive has reached nearly 7 million monthly active users, hitting that mark eight months after launch.

DeeperDive is Taboola’s AI question-and-answer product for publisher websites. In the UK, it is already used by titles including The Independent and Reach publications such as the Mirror, the Express, MyLondon and the Manchester Evening News.

The tool is also expanding into six more languages: French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean and Spanish. Publishers joining that expansion include Ouest France, El Nacional and Ynet.

Taboola says politics, sport, finance, entertainment and shopping are the most common topics for user questions. About half of questions submitted through the service relate to news, entertainment and sports information from the previous 24 hours.

Figures provided by Taboola suggest some publishers are seeing adoption rates of as much as 17% among users on sites where the product has been integrated. In other words, roughly one in six visitors is using the feature to ask questions.

Taboola also says DeeperDive is changing how readers move through publisher sites once they enter the AI interface. The company says the likelihood of a user choosing to read an article after entering the system rises to more than 20%, compared with the low single-digit rates that have long characterised article-to-article recirculation across much of the web.

Another part of the pitch to publishers is editorial data. According to Taboola, newsroom teams using the DeeperDive dashboard can review millions of reader questions each month, often more than 10 million, and use that information to guide coverage and homepage decisions.

Publisher push

The launch and rollout come as publishers look for ways to keep readers on their own sites while generative AI products reshape search and discovery habits. For media groups, tools embedded directly into article pages may help retain audience attention and capture more direct signals on reader interests, rather than ceding that interaction to external AI services.

Taboola has long been known for content recommendation and advertising placements on publisher sites. DeeperDive extends that role into AI-driven discovery and gives the company another path into advertising tied to reader interaction on news and media websites.

Taboola says DeeperDive users generate some of the highest advertiser conversion rates across its network, though it did not provide absolute revenue or conversion figures.

Executive view

Chief Executive Officer Adam Singolda outlined the company’s case for why publishers are adopting the product.

“Publishers love DeeperDive because it brings the AI revolution directly into their own environments, enabling readers to ask questions, have conversations, and discover trusted content in entirely new ways,” said Adam Singolda, Chief Executive Officer, Taboola. “In my career, I have never seen users adopt a new product at these levels while generating such strong engagement and advertiser performance.”

He also set out the company’s view of how AI services may develop across the web.

“I believe the AI landscape will ultimately be defined by two models: subscription LLMs and ad supported LLMs. With DeeperDive, we have the opportunity to build the largest ad supported LLM for the open web, free for publishers and free for users. At the same time, we’re creating a powerful new supply opportunity for advertisers and a meaningful new revenue stream for publishers. People want more than answers. They want trusted content and to be part of a community. While direct AI engines are powerful, I will always prefer watching Knicks highlights on my favorite local or sports site or reading travel reviews from a trusted publication when planning a trip with my family. Experiences built around trusted content and community will only grow stronger over time,” said Singolda.

Taboola says its wider network reaches more than 600 million daily active users across publisher and device partners, giving it a broad installed base from which to distribute products such as DeeperDive.

CirrusHQ has appointed Gary Beddow as Head of Business Development, expanding the Scottish cloud consultancy’s sales team.

Beddow joins from Digital Space, where he held a similar role for several years. He will report to Chief Revenue Officer Stephen Croke and arrives shortly after the company appointed Matt Smith as Head of Sales.

The new position adds senior weight to CirrusHQ’s commercial team as it looks to deepen its work with public sector customers. Beddow brings experience in cloud services, the public sector and the wider Amazon Web Services market.

CirrusHQ focuses on AWS consulting and holds Premier Tier Services Partner status with the cloud provider. Its work includes security, compliance and cloud management for organisations using AWS.

Public Sector Focus

CirrusHQ’s leadership linked the hire to demand from government bodies and other public service organisations for cloud-based systems. That demand is also being driven by growing interest in artificial intelligence tools and the data infrastructure needed to support them.

James Lucas, Chief Executive Officer of CirrusHQ, said: “Cloud First strategies are now the norm across the public sector, with many local authorities and central governmental departments fully recognising the power and scale that the technology can provide. Not only this, but as we see increased AI adoption in the sector, the cloud is primed to provide the solid data foundation that AI needs to thrive. From our experience working with councils and other public sector organisations across the UK, we know that they want to drill down further into the benefits of the cloud. Gary’s strong track record and dual cloud and public sector experience will allow him to fully support our customers on their ongoing cloud journeys.”

The focus on the public sector reflects a broader market shift as councils, central government departments and healthcare bodies modernise systems while under pressure to improve efficiency and resilience. Many are also managing ageing infrastructure and rising expectations around digital services.

Beddow said his new role would focus on helping those organisations tackle a broad range of operational and technology challenges. His remit includes first-time cloud migration, management of existing cloud estates and work involving newer artificial intelligence tools.

“I’m really excited to join such a capable AWS Cloud specialist and contribute to further success. The public sector, including local and central government as well as healthcare, are having to change and evolve in many ways to support their citizens and patients. Senior leaders are being continually asked to deliver improved efficiencies, provide more resilient and secure systems whilst also exploring and adopting new technologies. It can be a real challenge for an organisation to meet all these objectives on their own and this is where CirrusHQ can assist. Whether it’s about migrating to the cloud for the first time to escape aging infrastructure and technological debt or help with managing and securing an existing cloud environment or exploring and delivering innovative new solutions with the latest Gen AI tool sets. In my humble opinion and experience to date, there are only a handful of AWS cloud partners that really understand the public sector and can reliably deliver. CirrusHQ is one of those organisations,” Beddow said.

Sales Expansion

The creation of the Head of Business Development role points to a broader expansion of the company’s sales operation rather than a direct replacement. With Smith as Head of Sales and Beddow leading business development, CirrusHQ appears to be separating sales leadership from market development as it pursues further growth.

For AWS-focused cloud consultancies, public sector demand has become an important competitive area. Buyers are looking for support not only with migration projects but also with governance, security and cost control after systems move to the cloud.

Beddow’s background at Digital Space may also prove relevant as customers increasingly seek advisers who understand both the technical and procurement realities of public bodies. That experience has become more valuable as departments expand their use of cloud services beyond basic infrastructure projects.

CirrusHQ said Beddow’s experience across cloud and public sector work would help customers as they continue to develop their cloud strategies.