Accountant for AI companies UK

An accountant for an AI company handles the things that make AI businesses different: heavy compute spend, research that may qualify for R&D relief, capitalising or expensing model development, investor friendly reporting and SEIS or EIS at the funding stage.

Training and inference spend behaves like cost of sales, not overhead. If GPU and API costs sit in administrative expenses, your gross margin looks like a software company's when it is not. We separate inference cost per customer so you can see real unit economics and price accordingly.

Relief is available where you seek an advance in science or technology and face genuine technical uncertainty that a competent professional could not readily resolve. Fine tuning an existing model with standard techniques generally does not qualify; building novel architecture, training methods or inference optimisation may. Claims now require an additional information form and named officer sign off, and HMRC scrutiny is high.

Internally developed software and models can be capitalised only where specific criteria are met, including technical feasibility and probable future economic benefit. Capitalising improves reported profit but reduces the immediate corporation tax deduction and complicates R&D claims. We set a policy you can defend to auditors and investors.

Rates, thresholds and deadlines quoted here reflect the current UK position and current HMRC and Companies House guidance. Check GOV.UK, or ask us, before relying on them for your own business.