London
Metro area · United Kingdom · Pop. 9.8M · #13 city by EV
* C→Unicorn and Unicorn→Decacorn rates are derived from current counts (no founding-cohort data); the four mid-funnel rates use Dealroom's cohort tracking.
Largest rounds
Largest funding rounds in London
A live treemap of the largest VC rounds. Each cell is one round into London-headquartered companies, grouped by Dealroom sector.
Largest rounds in London - 2026
VC investment
How much venture capital flows into London
VC investment into London-headquartered, VC-backed companies, broken down by round size, company location, sector and funding stage.
Academia
London's academic flywheel
Companies founded by university alumni or spun out of research, plus the institutions producing the most founders tied to London.
| # | University | City | Based here | Companies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇬🇧University of Cambridge | Cambridge | 60 | 5,716 |
| 2 | 🇬🇧Imperial College London | London | 50 | 3,472 |
| 3 | 🇬🇧University of Oxford | Oxford | 38 | 4,873 |
| 4 | 🇫🇷INSEAD | Fontainebleau | 22 | 5,317 |
| 5 | 🇺🇸Stanford University | Stanford, CA | 14 | 12.2K |
| 6 | 🇺🇸Harvard University | Cambridge, MA | 14 | 8,290 |
| 7 | 🇺🇸MIT | Cambridge, MA | 8 | 8,708 |
| 8 | 🇫🇷École Polytechnique | Palaiseau | 6 | 1,467 |
Location comparison
How London stacks up
Compare London with peers from the same country (United Kingdom) — switch between combined EV, EV growth, and a growth × size view. Expand the table for the full ranking.
Combined enterprise value of each ecosystem.
Top cities in United Kingdom ranked by combined EV. London's row is highlighted (#1).
| # | Ecosystem | Combined EV | EV growth | Unicorns | VC invested | Tracked startups |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | London | $715B | 5.6× | 161 | $18.1B | 11.4K |
| 2 | East of England | $205B | 3.4× | 18 | $2.5B | 1,155 |
| 3 | Cambridge (UK) | $180B | 3.6× | 16 | $2.3B | 595 |
| 4 | South East England | $63.1B | 2.9× | 16 | $1.3B | 1,693 |
| 5 | Edinburgh | $41.6B | 8.3× | 2 | $302.9M | 423 |
| 6 | North West England | $34.1B | 2.5× | 13 | $193.8M | 1,103 |
| 7 | Midlands | $30.5B | 5.8× | 7 | $402.2M | 905 |
| 8 | Oxford | $29.3B | 2.9× | 8 | $630.7M | 429 |
| 9 | Yorkshire and the Humber | $27.1B | 6.1× | 6 | $175.4M | 585 |
| 10 | East Midlands | $23B | 5.8× | 4 | $82.2M | 389 |
| 11 | Manchester | $22B | 2.3× | 9 | $109.6M | 597 |
| 12 | South West England | $20.6B | 2.6× | 5 | $216.5M | 860 |
Sector concentration
Where London punches above its weight
Sectors in which London's share of the global unicorn pool is bigger than its overall share. A 5× over-index means London is 5× more represented in that sector than in the global average. Source: top-hub aggregation across the 18 simplified sectors.
Premium analytics
What we don't show on this page (yet)
Sector breakdowns, founder origins, AI-talent leaderboards and live deal flow are gated to logged-in Dealroom users. Book a demo to access the full London dataset — or see a sample on the Dealroom app.
More data
Explore Dealroom data →Get the full London ecosystem on Dealroom
Live company-by-company deal flow, full cap tables, founder pedigrees, hiring signals and revenue trajectories.