We hold the register data for every UK marketing company formed since January 2025, so we asked it a question nobody had asked: do the companies that named themselves after the AI wave survive it? The answer is uncomfortable for the buzzword economy. The name is not a strategy.
companies in the cohort carry “AI” in their registered name
of AI-named companies already dissolved, against 6.2% of the rest of the cohort
the age-adjusted dissolution rate · 57 actual deaths against 24.8 expected at their birth-month peers’ rates
of AI-named companies formed in Q3 2025 are already gone, against 6.6% of their same-quarter peers
Source: Mode Marketing analysis of the Companies House register, July 2026. Cohort: all 29,609 UK marketing companies incorporated 1 January 2025 to 12 July 2026. Aggregates only.
Be careful with what this finding is and is not. The name does not kill the company: a register records outcomes, not motivations. But a company named around a technology wave is disproportionately likely to have been formed to chase that wave, and the register shows what happens next. Formed in the most feverish quarter, Q3 2025, AI-named marketing companies are already dying at more than four times the rate of their same-quarter peers.
The sharpest way to see it is against our own GEO Jobs Index, published the same week from the same research programme. UK employers are writing “generative engine optimisation” into 47 live job specs with salaries attached: the skill AI created is entering the labour market and being paid for. Meanwhile the word is dying on the register at 2.3 times the base rate. Substance is compounding while the label evaporates.
For anyone buying marketing services, the practical read is simple: a supplier's name, and for that matter their claims about AI, tell you almost nothing. Their company record, their filing history, whether their own website is readable and verifiable, and whether their prices are published, tell you nearly everything. That is the same conclusion our State of the UK Agency Market research reached from the opposite direction.
Cohort: all 29,609 companies with marketing-services SIC codes incorporated at Companies House between 1 January 2025 and 12 July 2026. “AI-named” means the registered name contains AI or A.I. as a standalone word (364 companies); words merely containing the letters, like “maid” or “air”, do not match. Because older companies have had more time to dissolve, rates are age-adjusted: we compute the dissolutions the AI-named group would have had if it died at the rest of the cohort's rate for each incorporation month (24.8 expected) and compare with the actual count (57). The gap is statistically far beyond chance. This measures correlation, not causation, and we say so in the piece. Data is public; anyone can reproduce the analysis. Corrections welcome at hello@modemarketing.ai.
In UK marketing services, yes, markedly. Mode analysed all 29,609 marketing companies incorporated since January 2025: the 364 with “AI” as a standalone word in their registered name dissolved at 2.3 times the rate of companies formed in the same months (57 dissolutions against 24.8 expected). The gap is far beyond chance. Source: Mode Marketing analysis of the Companies House register, July 2026.
No, and this matters: the name is a marker, not a cause. A company named around a technology wave is more likely to have been formed to chase that wave, sometimes without a product, customers or plan underneath. The register cannot see motivation, only outcomes, so this is correlation, honestly labelled. What it does show is that labelling yourself with the trend, on its own, confers no survival advantage whatsoever.
Not remotely. AI is transforming marketing in measurable ways, and hundreds of the AI-named companies in this cohort are alive and trading. Meanwhile Mode’s GEO Jobs Index found 47 UK job listings naming “generative engine optimisation” in July 2026, real salaries behind a real skill. The contrast is the point: the skill is entering job specs while the buzzword name dies on the register. Substance and label are different assets.
The data suggests the name is close to irrelevant next to what actually predicts being found and chosen: whether machines and buyers can read, verify and trust you. A verifiable company record, a readable website, published pricing and honest claims outlast any naming fashion. If you want to know what AI systems currently see when they look at your business, that is a measurable question.
The businesses AI systems recommend are the ones they can read, verify and trust · none of which comes from a name. The AI Visibility Check measures exactly that for your business: does AI mention you, can it read you, and the top three fixes, benchmarked against your three closest competitors.
AI VISIBILITY CHECK · £95Honest by design: we measure signals, not guarantees. How GEO works.