Earlybird has been named the winner of the Cisco Innovation of the Year Award at the 2026 Elite Business 100 Awards, held on 11 March at the Leonardo Royal Hotel, St Paul's, London.

The award recognises SMEs that have used technology and forward-thinking innovation to scale their businesses. Earlybird was selected from a shortlist of 15 companies, having also been shortlisted in the Start-Up of the Year category.

Earlybird ranked #81 in the 2026 EB100 league table, which assesses the UK's top-performing small and medium-sized businesses across eight criteria: growth, innovation, financials, team size, longevity, community contribution, people development and future ambition. The rankings are judged by an independent panel that includes figures from Cisco, the British Business Bank, the Institute of Directors and the Small Business Commissioner.

What Earlybird Does

Earlybird builds AI tools for UK citizen services. The platform includes: Conversations, a 24/7 AI agent that conducts vocational and diagnostic assessments with programme participants, and WorkScribe, which transcribes live adviser conversations into structured case notes and supports post-appointment activities.

Employment advisers across the UK carry a significant administrative workload. Time spent writing up case notes and updating systems is time not spent with the people they support. Earlybird's technology is designed to address that directly, handling structured data capture so advisers can focus on the human interactions that drive real outcomes for participants.

Why This Matters

Earlybird has been working to change how citizen services such as employment support are delivered. The company's AI platform is now live across multiple providers delivering some of the UK's largest national employability and other programmes, helping advisers reduce administrative time, increase participant engagement and improve programme outcomes.

The EB100 recognition places Earlybird alongside some of the UK's most ambitious businesses across every sector, from technology and ecommerce to financial services and creative industries. For a company operating in citizen services, being recognised for innovation at this level is a big milestone.

Claudine Adeyemi-Adams, Founder and CEO of Earlybird, said:

"Innovating in public services is hard. You're trying to completely change how services are delivered, and the innovation alone isn't enough. You need everything around it. This award is recognition for the whole team who work incredibly hard to build what we're building and drive real change. To have that recognised beyond the citizen services space we operate in, on a stage like the EB100, is something really special."

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About the Elite Business 100

The Elite Business 100 is an annual league table published by Elite Business Magazine, recognising Britain's top-performing SMEs. The 2026 awards ceremony took place on 11 March at the Leonardo Royal Hotel in London, with winners announced across 11 categories including Innovation of the Year, SME of the Year, Start-Up of the Year and Diversity and Inclusion. The EB100 is distributed to a network of over 500,000 through Elite Business and its media partners.

To find out how Earlybird can support your organisation, book a demo with our team here.

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