With AI heralded as the new gamechanging frontier in technology, there are now huge opportunities for Scotland to stake its place at the forefront of AI’s global development.
The recent launch of a new £1m programme of Scottish government funding was designed to help the country’s SMEs seize AI’s benefits through tailored support, while a number of local authorities across Scotland are subject to multibillion pound AI infrastructure investment proposals. In 2026, the Scottish government will launch AI Scotland, a national transformation programme driven by collaboration between business, academia, government and public agencies.
According to Scotland’s trade and inward investment agency, a Brand Scotland partner, the country is now home to 11,200 digital tech businesses with 76,000 people employed in its digital and technology industries.
Each year, the country’s higher education institutions see thousands of students graduate in digital technology fields, with many going on to work in the thriving tech hubs of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Wordsmith AI is one company benefiting from that talent pool for its legal tech platform that helps in-house legal teams with contract reviews, template drafts and policy guidance. In just 18 months since its launch, the Edinburgh-based firm has reached a $100m valuation (£75m) and was also named in Tech Nation’s Future Fifty programme, focused on companies with a $1bn potential.
Wordsmith AI’s CEO, Ross McNairn, puts the fast growth down, in part, to Scotland’s better quality of life that attracts a high quality workforce to the country. “There’s a certain type of talent who wants to leave London,” he says. “When people come here [to Edinburgh] and look around, they see it’s beautiful, they don’t have to commute for two hours every day, they have a 20-minute walk to work, and the amenities are lovely.
“The universities are also superb. The technical quality we get out of them, Edinburgh University in particular, is world-class.” He adds that the cost base is much lower, allowing the company to hire nearly two employees in Edinburgh for the cost of having one located in New York.
Low churn of strong talent
Scotland has long been a powerhouse for technology manufacturing and as the landscape has become more digital-focused in the past 20 years, firms across cybersecurity, data analytics and fintech have set up there.
About half of Wordsmith AI’s 60 employees in Edinburgh are Scottish, with the rest from around the globe. “Churn is very low because we don’t really have any competition,” says McNairn. “So when people come, they stay.”
Wordsmith’s clients now include big names such as BT, Trustpilot, Heinz and Skyscanner, and much of the skill behind its platform’s code, build and implementation was forged in Scotland.
“There’s good engineering talent from Glasgow, St Andrews is exceptional for software engineering, and a lot of people in the sales team studied at Aberdeen,” McNairn says. “And there’s also a lot of legal talent here too.”
Scotland’s attractiveness to world-leading technology companies is undoubted and it is home to a thriving tech sector dedicated to space. Glasgow has established itself as Europe’s leading hub for the manufacture of small satellites, such as CubeSats and PocketQubes, producing more than any other city on the continent.
The UK’s largest tech incubator, CodeBase, is based in Scotland and working hard to take tech startups to the next level of scale. In its recent Edinburgh Shaping the Future of Innovation report, it pointed to the city’s strongest startup activity being in line with the area’s academic and public sector priorities.
“AI, healthtech, fintech and greentech have grown steadily due to targeted investment, specialist institutes, and a long-term view of how research translates into real impact,” it explained.
Visibility support from government
Elsewhere, critical investment into tech companies is now flowing from the Scottish government, the UK government, and the private sector offering capital and hands-on support to early-stage founders.
McNairn praises the help Wordsmith AI received from national bodies with grants and procuring services. “They’ve been very proactive,” he says.
“They push us forward into a lot of government and regulatory discussions and debates very early on, so there’s a big advantage to being a big fish in a small pond. If we were in San Francisco, no one would care. We would get the ecosystem benefits, but none of the visibility benefits.”
Scotland’s travel infrastructure has also proved a major factor, given 98% of Wordsmith’s revenues come from outside Scotland. Edinburgh Airport helps because “it’s direct to New York and Boston and nearly everywhere in Europe”, while colleagues use the train for trips back and forth to London.
McNairn himself is Scottish and moved back a few years ago after stints in Spain, the US and South Africa. As an alumni of Aberdeen, he speaks warmly of the quality of education. But as an Edinburgh-born entrepreneur, back home around family and friends, he didn’t choose Scotland for nationalistic reasons.
“I hire where it’s best for the business,” he says. “And we have been growing effectively in Scotland on a meritocratic basis. We get more engineers of a higher quality than elsewhere.”
Beyond that, the Scottish capital and Scotland remain central to the Wordsmith AI story. “There’s quality of life,” McNairn says. “And it’s just a nice place to live.”
Find out more about opportunities to live and work, study, visit or do business in Scotland at Scotland.org
