3,183 UK companies put 'AI' in their name in nine months
Registrations of AI-named companies rose 29 per cent to September, far outpacing company formation generally. The law firm that counted them says a name cleared by Companies House is not a name you are safe to trade under.
The business law firm LegalVision counted 3,183 new UK companies with "AI" in their names incorporated between January and September 2026.
That is up about 29 per cent on the 2,467 registered over the same nine months of 2025, according to the firm's analysis of Companies House data.
Overall company formation grew too, but far more slowly. Total new registrations rose 10.3 per cent, from 537,218 to 592,743 — roughly 19 percentage points behind the AI-named cohort, the firm said.
The density has changed more than the raw count. AI-named firms accounted for 53.7 in every 10,000 incorporations in the first nine months of 2026, against 6.4 in the same period of 2019, on LegalVision's figures.
Growth has run every year since 2022, when ChatGPT was released publicly. The firm puts the 2023 rise at 205 per cent, and the January-to-September figure for 2025 at 174 per cent, from 902 to 2,467. The whole of 2025 produced 3,435 AI-named businesses. LegalVision expects a further 1,272 before this year ends.
Established companies are joining in. The firm counted 250 rebrands to include "AI" between January and September 2026, a 34 per cent increase on 186 in the same period last year, and at least 722 such rebrands since late 2022.
Geography is less predictable than the London headline suggests. London registered the most AI-named companies by a distance, 1,425, but ranked eighth per head of new incorporations at 51.6 per 10,000.
Cambridge led on that relative measure between January 2023 and September 2026, with 66 AI-named firms among 7,736 new companies, or 85.3 per 10,000. Altrincham came second on 83.5, then Oxford on 76.6, Brighton on 75.8 and Oldham on 72.7.
The legal warning attached to the numbers is the part founders tend to skip. Sahil Verma, practice leader at LegalVision, said registering a name at Companies House does not by itself give a business the right to use that name commercially.
He said companies should search the UK trade mark register and check for similar existing brands before committing, because bolting "AI" onto an existing name may not distinguish it from anyone else's.
There is a second exposure for firms whose products do not do what the name implies. Verma said using "AI" in a company name is not necessarily unlawful even where no artificial intelligence services are provided, but marketing a service as "AI-powered" when no artificial intelligence is involved could raise concerns under UK consumer protection law.
For founders mid-rebrand, his checklist covers trade marks, contracts, websites and legal documents, plus telling customers and suppliers. Where the legal entity is unchanged, he said, existing contracts generally continue, though some agreements carry notification requirements.
The practical reading: a name that clears incorporation in an afternoon can still collide with a registered trade mark, and the pool of potential collisions grew by 3,183 in nine months. The trade mark search costs less than the dispute.