Level39 in Canary Wharf

Level39 is a wholly owned subsidiary of Canary Wharf Group. Its profile at the ScaleUp Institute describes an innovation space of 80,000 square feet in One Canada Square, run on a membership model and home to 180 pipeline and scaling businesses. The same profile says member companies have raised more than £1bn, and it names Innovate Finance and London & Partners among the partners who support members.

The space grew floor by floor. It started on level 39 and later added the 24th and 42nd floors for the faster-growing companies. Property Week described the arrangement from Canary Wharf Group's side: a member that outgrows Level39 can move into other office space on the estate, and the group counts the startup community as an amenity for its existing tenants.

In the first years about half of the roughly 200 companies at Level39 worked in financial technology, and most of the others in cyber security, retail technology and smart cities. Today Level39 lists data and AI next to fintech and cyber security.

Cyber security and fintech meet in the bank's purchasing department. Under DORA, a bank in the EU records every ICT service contract and checks the resilience of its suppliers, so a London fintech that sells to a German bank answers questions about its security setup before the product demo gets far.

Level39 sells three kinds of membership: a community membership for individuals who need a London base for a few days a month, a coworking membership with a desk on the floor, and an office membership for teams. Each one includes the member events and introductions to other members. Property Week reported an entry condition beyond the fee: Level39 looks for companies with a product that can be deployed globally.

The event rooms are also for hire, and one of them is called Sandbox, which is what most searches for "level39 sandbox" mean. Level39 also runs the Level39 x Canary Wharf meetups for startups and scale-ups in fintech, cyber, AI and life sciences.

The UK writes its own rules for payments and crypto outside the EU, and the Financial Conduct Authority supervises them. The FCA's innovation services include a Regulatory Sandbox for testing a product with real consumers, Innovation Pathways for questions on how the rules apply to a new model, a Digital Sandbox with synthetic data sets and an AI Lab for the use of AI in UK financial markets. A firm at Level39 that tests an AI model or a payment product in the UK works with these services.

A UK license no longer passports into the EU. A London fintech that serves German clients needs an EU authorization, from BaFin or from another EU supervisor whose license passports across the single market, as explained at fintech in Europe. The London section of crypto hubs in Europe covers the crypto side.

Level39 is a technology hub in One Canada Square in Canary Wharf, London, owned by Canary Wharf Group. It rents desks and offices to startups and scale-ups, runs events and connects its members with mentors and investors. Fintech and cyber security were its first subjects, and data and AI came later.

When it opened, the press called Level39 Europe's largest technology accelerator, and searches still use both words. Level39 itself describes a membership model: a company pays for space and access to the network, and it can move into larger space on the estate when it grows. For a cohort program with corporate partners, Plug and Play is the comparison.

Level39 is in One Canada Square, the tower at the center of the Canary Wharf estate in East London. The original space is on the 39th floor, which gave the hub its name, and later floors were added in the same building.