TL;DR

Seeing Machines, the AIM-listed firm whose cameras and AI follow where a driver is looking and how their head is positioned, grew revenue 45% to about £59m ($76.3m) from roughly £41m ($52.8m). The second half alone rose 126%. The trigger was regulatory: the EU’s General Safety Regulation made camera-based driver monitoring compulsory on all new vehicle registrations in Europe from 7 July 2026.

Where the growth came from

Royalties did the heavy lifting, up 135% year on year to about £26m ($33.9m) as manufacturers rushed to integrate the technology ahead of the mandate. Production volumes of vehicles carrying it rose 195% to nearly 4.5 million units, and the fourth quarter set a record at 2.1 million — more than four times the same quarter last year.

That converts to profit. The company expects earnings before tax of roughly £8m to £9m ($10.7m–$11.7m) in the second half, against a first-half loss of about £11m ($13.7m), and to finish the year holding around £3.3m ($4.3m) in cash.

Chief executive Paul McGlone called the year pivotal, noting demand is now “increasingly underpinned by regulatory requirements”.

Beyond the mandate

Three Japanese manufacturers signed up during the period, alongside roughly £31m ($40m) of expanded programmes with existing European customers. More than 8.2 million vehicles worldwide are estimated to run the software.

The commercial fleet product, Guardian — used by Transport for London — posted a 90% quarter-on-quarter jump in hardware sales, closing the year at about £12m ($15m).

Looking forward

The interesting part for UK businesses is not the AI. It is that a compliance deadline in a market Britain has left produced the demand curve, and a London-listed company captured it.

Seeing Machines spent years selling driver monitoring as a safety benefit and lost money doing it. The technology did not change in July; the obligation to buy it did. That is a reminder worth holding as UK firms weigh AI investment against a domestic regulatory picture still spread across departments: for a whole class of products, the addressable market is written by regulators, not customers. The corollary is less comfortable — revenue underpinned by a mandate is revenue exposed to whatever that mandate does next.