Carlos Gemmel

Artificial intelligence is often spoken about in sweeping, futuristic terms as a transformative force that will reshape industries overnight. But it’s true and the story is already unfolding here in Scotland, and it’s one of talent, innovation, and global ambition.

At Malted.AI we started long before ChatGPT became a household name. We weren’t chasing hype, we were solving hard, practical problems for enterprise. We focus on distillation, compressing the capabilities of large general AI models into smaller, more focused ones for better results.

That conviction has shaped our journey. We’ve raised more than £7 million from investors across Europe, grown to a team of 25 with alumni from Meta, Bloomberg, Google, financial giants and Scotland’s own start-up ecosystem, and built products that are now helping financial services firms make sense of vast, complex customer data. We are at the cutting edge of AI application for industry.

Investors and customers sometimes assume that success in consumer AI applications will translate seamlessly into enterprise AI. However, enterprises don’t pay for experiments, they pay for outcomes they can trust. They need predictability, security and domain expertise. Ask the same question twice to a consumer model and you’ll likely get two different answers. That’s acceptable in a personal setting but unacceptable in financial services. The winners in enterprise AI will combine cutting-edge machine learning with deep sector expertise and that is exactly where Scotland’s strengths can shine.

AI is a young technology that is endlessly customisable, but regulation is necessary to ensure it is deployed with care. It has global reach and we’ve learned that Scotland has all the ingredients to lead in applied AI, we just need to be ambitious enough to think internationally from day one in this incredibly competitive market.

One of Scotland’s strengths is talent. Our universities are producing exceptional graduates in data and computing sciences, and crucially, many of them want to stay and build careers here. We’ve benefitted from this and Scotland’s growing pool of operators, who have scaled companies, are now mentoring or joining the next wave of founders.

The tech and business ecosystem in Scotland has another unique advantage, it is small enough that you can know the people who matter, but large enough to contain real expertise and international experience. That balance makes it an ideal place to start and grow a globally ambitious business.

Where we still fall short as a country is in growth capital. Early-stage support in Scotland is strong where angels, grants and accelerators do their job well. But when you move beyond the starter story and need to raise significant rounds, you often have to look to London, Europe or the US.

That doesn’t mean Scotland can’t be the base for global AI scale-ups. We just need more international capital in the room, more often, and we need to demonstrate that our companies can compete with the best anywhere.

This is why events like Invest2Scale are so valuable. It brings together Scotland’s most ambitious scale-ups with serious investors who can provide the firepower to grow internationally. For investors, it’s a chance to see what Scotland has to offer, a country with deep pools of talent, globally relevant expertise and founders hungry to build companies that last. Innovation really is in the water here and the companies that will win are those that think globally from the first line of code and measure themselves against international standards.

It’s positive to see increasing investment in AI technology and infrastructure. Targeted innovation can be powerful and deliver outsized impact. We are proud to be part of this thriving ecosystem as we continue to leverage what Scotland is best at to ride the wave of AI innovation.

Carlos Gemmel is co-founder of Malted AI and speaker at Invest2Scale 2025