Quality quartet sprinkle more gold dust on glittering Awards sponsor line-up
Four new global leaders in their fields have joined the sponsor line-up this year – Innovate Cambridge, which is a pathfinder to Cambridge innovation growth on the world stage; international quantum computing giant Quantinuum, £34 billion pensions scheme Railpen and the hugely growing Wellcome Genome Campus.
Behind lead forensic sponsor Mills & Reeve, an increasingly international law firm, the importance and impact of the sponsors (listed below) oozes quality.
The 2026 competition is open for entries with all the same categories as last year plus some new ones to be added in the coming weeks.
Companies that have won our Business of the Year accolade plus individual category titles have been sold over the years for well over $100 billion and have represented every conceivable sector of industry.
CuspAI, crowned Business of the Year in the 35th Anniversary Business Weekly Awards in September, is hiring top talent in terms of staff and executive experience and has made commendable progress in the last three months. Led by CEO Dr Chad Edwards, CuspAI is a frontier AI trailblazer bidding to solve the breakthrough materials required to power genuine human progress. As the company elucidates, while nature took billions of years to perfect molecules, CuspAI is harnessing AI to unlock trillion-dollar materials breakthroughs in months, not millennia. Its founding group is the most cited in the world, comprised of world-class researchers in AI, chemistry and engineering.
In addition to its technology, Business Weekly Awards judges were impressed that CuspAI had just secured – although it had not announced it officially – a $100 million+ Series A funding round co-led by US fund New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Temasek, with participation from NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), Samsung Ventures, Hyundai Motor Group, and returning investors.
The partnerships CuspAI has struck are all potentially transformative. For example, at the AI in Science Summit in Copenhagen, CuspAI announced a collaboration with Topsoe and the Technical University of Denmark for creating more efficient and sustainable catalysts.
CuspAI announced a strategic partnership with Hyundai Motor Group, working to enhance the efficiency, durability, and stability of next-generation materials for future smart mobility solutions. Demonstrating its range of expertise, the company also partnered with Kemira in Finland to target the removal of PFAS (forever chemicals) from water.
As part of its carbon capture partnership with tech giant Meta, CuspAI collaborated with the Californian-headquartered company alongside the Georgia Institute of Technology on a research paper and dataset designed to increase the number of atomic structures for potential carbon capture materials by orders of magnitude.
The company has hired talent to reflect its increasingly planet-wide footprint. For example, it recruited preeminent materials scientist and Imperial College London Professor Aron Walsh as Chief Scientific Officer - a timely hire as it prepares to open its first site in London in early 2026.
It has also unveiled genuine big-hitters as new leaders on its advisory board - not least former CEO of BP Lord John Browne and Martin van den Brink, ex-CTO and president of ASML. They join existing members, Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton; Meta’s outgoing Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun; Berkeley Distinguished Professor Kristin Persson; and former Google DeepMind ethics lead Verity Harding.
Over the course of 2025, CuspAI was one of the frontier AI companies named in the UK government’s recently published AI for Science strategy, for example. And The World Economic Forum chose CuspAI for its Technology Pioneers programme.
The company made the TechCrunch Disruptors60 list while Sifted ranked CuspAI No 1 on its 100 ranking of rising European AI stars. CuspAI was also named by Founders Forum as an FF Rising Star while Norrsken included CuspAI in its annual Impact/100 - projecting its logo in Times Square. As the scroll of honour kept growing, Accel featured CuspAI on its list of top 100 AI and Cloud companies in its Globalscape report.
CuspAI continues to hire talent and urges potential recruits to keep tabs on the careers section of its website.
Business Weekly Awards 2026 sponsors
Mills & Reeve
Lead forensic sponsor Mills & Reeve is a national law firm that advises companies on an impressive range of disciplines affecting corporates of all sizes. Up to 45 per cent of its work these days is international and it has a great reach in the areas of academia, science & technology in which the East of England is notably strong. Besides those specialisms, the firm’s corporate work across the board is extensive and outstanding.
Arm
The superchip architect notched its 35th anniversary in November 2025 and has expanded its headquarters in Cambridge UK as well as growing in America, Asia and elsewhere in the UK and Europe. Quoted on the Nasdaq market in the United States, Arm brainpower is at the heart of AI and the company provides the industry’s most efficient and highest performing compute platform from the edge to the heart. More than 325 billion Arm-based devices have been shipped to date. The world’s biggest companies are integral to the ecosystem and innovating on Arm.
AstraZeneca
The UK’s leading biopharma company and ace collaborator is delivering a range of life-changing medicines. AstraZeneca has moved to a new multi-market model of floating in the UK, the United States and Stockholm. It is headquartered at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in the UK. The company has promised to invest $50 billion in America for medicines manufacturing and R & D and its sectoral reach is vast, spanning Oncology, BioPharma, Cardiovascular, Renal & Metabolism; Respiratory & Immunology; Vaccines & Immune Therapies and Rare Disease.
Barclays
The Bank has been built over centuries and its vision is to be the UK-centred leader in global finance. It is a diversified bank with comprehensive UK consumer, corporate and wealth and private banking franchises, a leading investment bank and a strong, specialist US consumer bank. Through these five divisions, it is working together for a better financial future for customers, clients and communities.
Cambridge Innovation Capital
CIC is a leading venture investor in the Cluster’s ecosystem. Its proprietary agreement with the University and deep network of entrepreneurs, research institutes and accelerators gives CIC deep insight into the next generation of globally impactful startups. It manages over £600 million in assets and its portfolio companies have raised billions.
Cambridge Network
The globally renowned membership organisation founded in 1997 brings people together through networking, learning, recruitment and a range of topical events. Along the way it connects and supports businesses, sparking collaboration throughout a vibrant network of more than 1,000 members. It caries regular job updates for member companies with Business Weekly as well as related event news that helps stimulate recruitment.
Cambridge Science Park
World famous and founded in 1970, Cambridge Science Park is home to more than 1780 companies from fledgling startups to blllion dollar multinationals. More than 7,250 employees of Science Park companies work on a dynamic range of science & technology propositions with global impact. Steered by Director Jane Hutchins, CSP is home to global greats such as Cambridge Consultants, Owlstone Medical, AstraZeneca, AVEVA, Bayer, Philips and Johnson Matthey and Park owner Trinity College is promising further expansion.
Cambridge Spark
Cambridge Spark is a UK-based EdTech company specialising in digital skills - particularly Data & AI, for corporate and government workforces using its unique EDUKATE.AI platform for practical, simulated learning to help organisations upskill employees for the AI era through flexible, blended learning programmes and apprenticeships. Long-term Awards stalwart Hanadi Jabado, who is Managing Partner at Sana Capital in Cambridge, sits on the Cambridge Spark Board.
Chesterford Research Park
Chesterford Research Park offers advanced laboratory and office space set within 250 acres of idyllic parkland near Cambridge – modern, dynamic, flexible facilities perfectly appointed for biotechnology, pharmaceutical and technology R & D companies of all sizes. Many of the tenants are global innovators - and that is a formula set to improve even further with the opening of the Park’s Sidney Sussex Building bringing fully fitted scale-up lawns to the heart of the South Cambridge science cluster.
Howard Group
Howard Group is a third generation family-owned company whose property development and investment arm is a long-term supporter of the Business Weekly Awards. Property Ventures has an investment portfolio in excess of £250 million, comprising 24 properties, one million sq ft of occupied space and around 100 tenants. Some of its development re retained within the investment portfolio whole some are sold on completion. The firm has a strong geographical focus across the Golden Triangle, chiefly Cambridge, London and Oxford.
Innovate Cambridge
Innovate Cambridge was launched in September 2022 with three founding organisations - the University of Cambridge, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Cambridge Enterprise - to define the future of the Greater Cambridge Life Sciences and technology ecosystem and ensure it continues to transform the UK and the world for the better. The resulting strategy is a 10-year programme with an ambitious vision to ensure Cambridge is the most impactful and important innovation ecosystem in the world.
MAG: London Stansted Airport
London’s third busiest airport helps East of England companies export and import goods and fly executives around the world as it now serves more than 200 destinations. While passenger services are predominantly throughout Europe, routes also extend to North Africa and the Middle East, making the base a major hub for low-cost carriers and a growing band of other globally influential airlines. Stansted handles well over 300,000 tonnes of cargo for companies serving the UK and has 30 million-plus passengers and plans for further growth with the existing terminal framework.
Marshall
Established in 1909, Marshall is a UK aerospace and defence company, rich in engineering heritage and capability, which serves global governments and prime contractors. As a global leader in military maintenance, repair and overhaul, it works closely with aircraft operators to keep their fleets mission-ready and mission-capable. It has supported the C-130 Hercules since 1966, earning multiple world-first accreditations, permissions and accolades for its excellence on the platform. It is also a leader in precision manufacturing, designing and producing parts, components and complex subsystems for flagship defence programmes under long-term contracts for some of the world’s largest OEMs.
PwC
With group revenue of £6.35 billion, PwC is a market leader not just in Cambridge where Simon de Young runs an impeccable business, but also right across the UK and internationally as its pan-corporate expertise is regularly used to transact global transactions. Forgot your outmoded image of what an accountancy practice handles, PwC excels in everything from audit to forensics, from risk to tax, from sustainability to economics and a good deal of business restructuring for good measure. It has around 23,000 people across its UK operations and consistently ranks as the #1 largest accounting firm in the UK by fee income and turnover, leading the ‘Big Four.’
Quantinuum
Quantinuum, which started life as Cambridge Quantum Computing, is a world leader in its sector. The company in autumn 2025 launched Helios - designed to accelerate quantum computing adoption by global enterprises and revolutionise GenAI. Global heavyweights such as NVIDIA, Amgen, SoftBank, JP Morgan Chase, BMW Group and BlueQubit were among Quantinuum’s community of collaborators in growing out the venture into a broader tech world.
In September we revealed that Quantinuum had effected a $600 million global fundraise at $10 billion pre-money equity valuation. Quanta Computer, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm) and QED Investors joined existing shareholders JPMorganChase, Mitsui, Amgen, Cambridge Quantum Holdings, Serendipity Capital and Honeywell – all of whom reinvested in the round. It also included participation from new backers MESH and Korea Investment Partners.
Railpen
Railpen manages the £34 billion railways pension scheme in the UK. In December 2025, it received consent to develop Beehive, its one million sq ft technology workspace, laboratory, and community hub in Cambridge. The Beehive is part of Railpen’s Innovation Cluster in the city, a portfolio of 11 assets totalling 1.9 million sq ft of space that will create a world-class centre for innovation and make a meaningful contribution to Cambridge’s economic and social progress.
Other assets in the Cluster include 230 Newmarket Road, Railpen’s proposed 112,000 sq ft Grade A office building; Mill Yard, its 180,000 sq ft mixed-use campus that completes in Q1 2027; and Botanic Place, its 325,000 sq ft global standard head quarters development that completes in Q1 2028.
Savills
In a region rich with property specialists, in terms of both residential and commercial, Savills continues to stand out as a globally pertinent operator. Its website boasts of more than 170 years long service and more than 42,000 property professionals across 70 countries who bring opportunities to life.
St John’s Innovation Centre
Since 1987, SJIC has been a Cambridge home tor innovation, helping startups and growing enterprises thrive and is where Business Weekly started life more than 35 years ago. As the first innovation hub of its kind in the whole of Europe, it continues to offer a dynamic and supportive environment where innovators can accelerate their growth. Studded in the growing Cambridge North segment of the Cluster, St John’s is scaling the successful proposition across the entire Park area.
University of Cambridge Judge Business School
Ann Davidson, head of the Entrepreneurship Centre, has grown programmes and international engagement at the Business School which has genuine global traction. New initiatives with equally ambitions enterprises in Hong Kong and South America highlight the ambition of the Judge team which has traditionally sponsored the Graduate Business of the Year category in our Awards. This honours companies that have thrived to a lesser or greater extent by hand-picking University of Cambridge graduate talent at a key stage of their development.
Wellcome Genome Campus
The Wellcome Genome Campus is already a globally recognised, established research hub but is now expanding for the future to support the UK’s position as a world leader in science and technology. Over the next few years, the Campus will increase in size from 125 acres to 440 acres. The approved plans include 1.6 million square feet for R & D, laboratories and commercial spaces, suitable for organisations of all shapes and sizes.
