British manufacturing startup Isembard has opened a 160,000 square-feet factory in central London that will produce components for defence, aerospace and robotics companies.
Isembard notes in a statement that the site is “just a few minutes” from both the centre of government in Westminster as well as The City, London’s financial centre. The location raises questions about how to secure a facility building hardware for critical industries that is in such close proximity to dense and high-profile locations. Isembard’s bet, however, is that setting up shop close to engineering talent and Whitehall makes it a good place to rebuild industrial capacity.
Isembard claims that new site, in the borough of Southwark, is the largest factory to open in central London since the Second World War. It will also double as the company’s global headquarters and a working precision manufacturing facility. The startup’s current customers include defence companies Babcock, Anduril and Tekever.
The news comes as the company works on closing a new round of funding to continue scaling. Isembard last raised in March 2026, a $50 million Series A led by New York’s Union Square Ventures that it said would finance the building of 25 AI-powered factories.
The company has expanded rapidly since it was founded in late 2024. Its network has grown from four factories at the beginning of this year to 16 currently across the UK, Europe and US (not including this newest location). It notes that revenue has increased tenfold year-on-year. By the end of 2028, it wants to have 100 owned and franchise-operated factories in the UK alone, which it expects would create around 2,200 skilled jobs.
For Isembard founder and CEO Alexander Fitzgerald, this new location was an obvious choice for the next factory and its new HQ.
“[It’s] near great talent – software, AI, robotics, F1 engineers,” Fitzgerald told Resilience Media when asked why the company had chosen central London for a facility producing for critical industries. “That’s our central purpose serving critical industries – aero, def, robo, energy.”
The facility houses three- and five-axis milling machines, turn-mills and wire electrical discharge machines, alongside a climate-controlled metrology lab. Software and robotics engineers working on Isembard’s MasonOS manufacturing platform will be based alongside the factory floor, giving them a direct view of production as they develop the company’s software and robotics technology.
Isembard currently employs 35 people at the site and expects that figure to reach 200 by the end of 2027, across production, software, manufacturing and robotics automation engineering.
“We have 15 factories across the UK and the world and are expanding fast,” Fitzgerald said. “London needs production capacity as does every region of the UK and we’ll provide that.” Isembard’s announcement puts the current figure at 16, including its newest Southwark site.
Fitzgerald added that the facility was intended to be more than a production site. “It’s both a production site and HQ for development of software, AI and robotics,” he said. “Being a 10 mins cycle from Whitehall is also helpful. Meeting the PM at 10 Downing St later today.”
That proximity comes as the government tries to use increased defence spending to rebuild domestic industrial capacity. The Defence Investment Plan sets out £298 billion of spending over the next four years, including more than £5 billion for drones and autonomous systems, alongside a wider push to strengthen sovereign capability and UK defence industry.
Security risks?
Isembard’s expansion also raises questions about how a growing network producing components for sensitive industries will be protected. Manufacturers have become targets for both financially motivated criminals and state-linked attackers, while sites producing components for defence and other critical sectors also have physical security concerns that go beyond conventional corporate IT.
Asked specifically how Isembard was approaching the physical security implications of putting critical manufacturing in central London, Fitzgerald did not address the question directly.
“All our factories produce critical work,” he said in response.
Isembard is hiring a security engineer whose remit includes protecting its factories, MasonOS and customer data across IT and operational technology, as well as a compliance engineer to establish security standards across its factory network. Neither role, however, answers the question of physical protection at the Southwark site.
The opening is ultimately a test of more than Isembard’s argument that Britain needs to manufacture more of what its defence and technology industries consume. The company is trying to build a distributed industrial network quickly, connect it through common software and automation, and put production close to the engineers developing those systems.
Doing that in central London, minutes from the centre of government, gives Isembard access to the talent and policymakers Fitzgerald wants nearby.
But as the network grows and takes on more sensitive work, securing that model will be as important as proving it can scale.
