HMRC Awards £175 Million AI Contract to UK Firm Quantexa
The UK government has made a significant move towards British AI sovereignty by awarding a £175 million, ten-year contract to Quantexa, a London-based AI company, to address the £46.8 billion tax gap. This decision comes after spending over £900 million on contracts with American firm Palantir across various UK government departments.
Background
The tax gap, the difference between the amount owed and what is actually collected, reached a staggering £46.8 billion in 2023-24. In response, the government aims to recover an additional £10 billion per year by 2030. Quantexa has been tasked with aiding this effort.
The Company and Its Technology
Founded in 2016 by Vishal Marria, a former executive director at Ernst and Young, Quantexa develops a Decision Intelligence platform. This software integrates data from multiple sources, aligns entities across datasets, and employs graph analytics and machine learning to uncover patterns beyond human scale. Initially designed for anti-money laundering in banking, the technology is now leveraged by HMRC to detect suspicious tax return patterns.
Quantexa reported impressive financial performance in the year ending March 2025, with revenue of £126 million, a 49% increase from the previous year. The company’s valuation reached £2.6 billion in a Series F funding round in March 2025, attracting investors like Warburg Pincus, HSBC, and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
A New Direction for British AI
With its recent success, Quantexa has become one of the UK’s most valuable AI companies, competing with Synthesia, a generative AI leader. While Synthesia focuses on generative media, Quantexa specializes in enterprise decision intelligence, showcasing diverse strengths within the UK’s AI ecosystem. Both companies operate globally, serving customers in over 70 countries.