News

Queen Mary Spinout Dragonfly AI Secures £5m to Accelerate Global Growth

Faculty of Science and Engineering  Centre for Human-Centred Computing 

12 February 2026

Dr Hamit Soyel
Dr Hamit Soyel

Queen Mary University of London is celebrating the success of its spinout company Dragonfly AI, which has secured £5 million in new investment to fuel its next phase of international expansion and product innovation.
Dragonfly AI, co-founded by Dr Hamit Soyel, Chief Scientist and inventor of the underlying technology, has rapidly become a market leader in predictive visual analytics. The technology is rooted in neuroscience research carried out at Queen Mary, where Dr Soyel and colleagues developed a biological algorithm that predicts human attention in real time.
Today, the platform is used by major global brands including Nestlé, Coca-Cola and L'Oréal to optimise the performance of their creative content across digital, in‑store, and omnichannel environments.
Speaking about the company's continued success, Dr Soyel said:
"Marketing teams compete for three things: attention, emotion and memory. Dragonfly AI is built on a biological algorithm we developed at Queen Mary University of London which allows global brands like Nestlé, Coca‑Cola and L'Oréal to optimise their creative performance across digital, in‑store, and omnichannel environments."
He added:
"Our science‑led approach can predict how people will see, feel, and remember creative content before it goes live. Crucially, because we rely on neuroscience and not training data, we can avoid the biases which plague many generative AI models. It's why we're trusted by some of the most valuable brands."
The new £5m investment—led by 24Haymarket with participation from Guinness Ventures, Foresight for Growing Companies, and others—will enable Dragonfly AI to expand globally and further strengthen its product suite.

People: Hamit SOYEL

Contact: Hamit Soyel
Email: h.soyel@qmul.ac.uk

Updated by: Peter Thorpe