By Charles Martin & Ellen Kloster

Ranging from AI to ed-tech here are our three favourite start ups currently operating in the UK.

Here we review the problems they solve; the technologies they use; their companies ethos; and relevent funding information.

Astroscreen:

A powerful tool in the fight against malicicous activity on social media..

Astroscreen is ‘the API for social network Bot detection’. Using machine learning techniques they are able to flag up fake accounts by identifying certain behavioural patterns associated with Bots. Crucially, Astroscreen are also able to identify ‘Bot Nets’, and were responsible for taking down the largest bot net on twitter which consisted of 350,000 users.

A bot is an autonomous program on a network which can interact with systems or users. They give the impression of ‘influence’ and have been used for malicious purposes like; attacking companies, for example with #boycott campaigns; and upsetting democratic processes. Gillette’s now infamous recent ad campaign, for example, was subjected to such an attack; and, aside from the Brexit campaign and US presidential campaigns, we have also seen ‘bot nets’ recently deployed in the recent Brazilian elections.

Astroscreen’s business model is based around protecting those at risk to such attacks, so far this has mainly been companies. They charge a fee and in return companies receive 24/7 protection from Astroscreen.

The underlying philosophy of the company is based on the premise that Social Media is an inherently positive space; however, it has recently become weaponised by those with malign purposes. Their mission therefore is to make social media a safe space once again.

The company just closed its seed round and are using these funds to expand their tech team and capabilities.

Wayve:

A new approach to driverless cars..

Wayve is pioneering artificial intelligence software for self-driving cars.

Wayve distinguishes itself from other companies in this space (e.g. Google) in foregoing ‘mapping’ in favour of ‘intelligence’.

Let’s break this down. Their premise is that many self-driving car companies are heavily reliant on mapping which reduces the scalability of their companies. In short, many firms in this space have to intricately map the area they plan their vehicles to operate on and thus cannot scale their operations given that they must then map in painstaking detail the other areas they wish to expand into.

Instead, Wayve use a number of machine learning approaches (assimilation to real world translations, reinforcement learning and conditional limitation learning) to develop cars that can drive themselves based on purely what they see, thus reducing the need for mapping or new data.

Three features define the core philosophy of the company. Firstly, that they see themselves at mavericks in this space and they take an entirely new approach to the problem. Secondly, that they leave a good footprint wherever they go. Lastly, their ethos is to ‘think big and succeed together’.

One cannot help but be impressed by their team. The company are overflowing with talented, young minds, who have previously developed breakthrough products in robotics and machine learning; authored top research papers; and, led international machine learning benchmarks.

The company just recently completed its seed round, and we look forward to seeing what it can achieve in this highly competitive space.

Aula Education:

Making education truly interactive..

We have been very impressed by the ed-tech ‘Aula’, it is a communications platform for education.

Unlike the current ‘learning management systems’ which underpin a student’s digital experience(e.g. Moodle), Aula aims to bring engagement to the fore. Replacing things like email and noticeboards Aula will allow students to communicate directly with each other and their students.

Consider, for example, a student who finds an interesting article or has a question about something; instead of emailing people or setting up a facebook group with their peers, they can go directly to this platform and direct contact a study group, teacher or individual student.

Aula consists of ‘spaces’. A space can be a class, programme or a larger part of the community (e.g. the library). These spaces are broked into ‘feed’ and ‘material’.

The feed is the heart of a space, where everyone can share content; it is here that students help each other and share content.

Material is for educators to organise the learning content for the space; it brings together all the key teaching resources a teacher uses from video to feedback forms.

The company just closed a very successful seed round, hopefully I’ll be able to be using it before I graduate!