Utopi named a finalist in the Technology Business of the Year category at the British Business Awards 2026.
We’re proud to share that Utopi was named a finalist in the Technology Business of the Year category at the British Business Awards 2026, held at the EICC in Edinburgh. While the trophy went to Octopus Energy on the night, being shortlisted alongside some of the UK’s most ambitious technology companies is a recognition the whole team is genuinely proud of.
It was a brilliant evening, and a striking reminder of just how much innovation and ambition is currently flowing through UK business.
The Largest Business Dinner in the UK
The British Business Awards is the largest business dinner in the UK, bringing together up to 2,000 senior leaders from companies representing more than £200 billion in collective turnover. The programme celebrates the founders, teams, and businesses driving growth, innovation, and impact across the British economy, with categories spanning technology, sustainability, scale-ups, and entrepreneurship.
This year’s ceremony was hosted by Rob Brydon and Elaine C Smith, with introductory remarks from the awards’ patron Sir Bob Geldof and a keynote address from George Clooney. Live music throughout the evening came from the Grammy Award-winning London Essentials. By any measure, it was a rare gathering of British business at scale.
Crucially, the night also delivered impact beyond the awards themselves. Last year’s event raised over £1.3m for charity, and this year’s chosen beneficiary, Social Bite, will benefit from a target of more than £2m to support its work tackling homelessness across the UK. That an event of this calibre is anchored in a tangible charitable mission was, for us, one of the most resonant aspects of the evening, and a clear statement that commercial success and positive social impact belong on the same stage.
The Technology Business of the Year Category
The Technology Business of the Year category recognises companies using technology to solve real-world problems at scale. Being shortlisted required evidence of growth, innovation, and demonstrable commercial impact, and the calibre of the finalist field this year reflected just how high that bar has become.
For Utopi, the recognition reflects six years of work building real estate’s most comprehensive ESG data platform. We now operate across 78,000+ rooms in 13 countries, with more than 50 billion ESG data points captured to date. That growth has been recognised previously in the Sunday Times 100 Tech, Deloitte’s Fast 50, the UBS UK Fast Growth Index, and the Innovation Entrepreneur of the Year title at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2025. To now be shortlisted at the British Business Awards adds another layer of validation, this time alongside the broadest cross-section of UK technology businesses.
Why This Matters for the Sector
Real estate has traditionally been a slow adopter of technology, but the picture is shifting quickly. The pressure to decarbonise, regulatory frameworks like SFDR, GRESB, and MEES, and the rising resident expectations shaping PBSA and build-to-rent are all driving genuine demand for technology that performs at portfolio scale. Recognition like this is never just for the finalist itself; it’s a marker for the wider sectors they represent.
For Utopi specifically, being named in the same field as the UK’s leading tech businesses signals that the data-driven decarbonisation of buildings is no longer a niche conversation. It has become one of the most commercially relevant questions facing real estate today, and the businesses helping clients answer it are starting to be recognised as part of the mainstream UK tech story.
A Great Night for UK Business
The room at the EICC brought together founders, operators, and investors from across the country, all building things that matter. The standard was extraordinary, the cause meaningful, and the energy in the room a strong reminder of why the UK remains one of the most exciting places in the world to build a technology business.
What awards like the BBAs offer is validation – for our team of around 55 people who turn up every day, for the clients who have trusted Utopi from early deployments to portfolio-wide rollouts, and for the broader thesis that people, planet, and profit can be a unified goal in real estate rather than a trade-off. On a night dedicated to using business success to fund Social Bite’s work, that thesis felt particularly fitting.
Thank you to the British Business Awards team, to Social Bite, and to everyone who has supported the Utopi journey so far.
To explore how Utopi’s building intelligence solutions are helping the real estate sector decarbonise, visit utopi.co.uk.