United Kingdom

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Introduction

Over the past decades, the United Kingdom (UK) has become one of the world’s most established startup ecosystems thanks to a variety of factors including a wealth of world class education hubs, a thriving job market, and a beneficial regulatory environment.

The UK startup ecosystem is now worth over $1T, making the UK the 3rd most valuable startup ecosystem globally.

On a global scale, the UK ranks 3rd globally for VC investment, is home to over 150 unicorns as well as 25k+ funded startups.

Venture Capital

The UK venture capital scene has traditionally dominated European VC, and has been consistent at funding innovation over the last decade.

By region

Emerging and high growth regions
UK entrepreneurship is distributed throughout the country, though concentrated in London. See below the top UK regions in terms of VC raised.

VC investment distribution across the UK

Greater London continues to make up a large share of the total UK VC investment.

By stage

Below we break venture capital into three distinct stages:

Startup stage ($0-15M rounds)
Breakout stage ($15-100M rounds)
Scaleup ($100M+ rounds).

This provides more consistent and timeless segmentation of the startup & venture capital landscape (more so than self-reported round labeling, which are applied inconsistently, especially between business cycles).

Early stage

Early-stage investing has remained active, filling the startup pipeline in the UK.

Access early-stage funding rounds into UK startups here on the Dealroom platform.

Breakout stage

Access breakout-stage funding rounds into UK startups here on the platform.

Scaleup stage

Access scaleup-stage funding rounds into UK startups here on the platform.

By industry

In 2023, Energy surpassed Fintech to be the UK’s most funded startup sector for the first time though Fintech has regained its regular top spot in 2024 again. Across a longer time period, Fintech is the undisputed winner.

Leading tech segments

Explore the latest tech segments into investment trends into UK startups seen in the chart below.

Sources of capital

Over half of VC investment has come from sources outside of Europe such as the US and Asia.

Explore this investment data here on the Dealroom platform.

Over the past decade, VC firms have consistently made up between 40-50% of total funding into the UK startup ecosystem.

Other sources of VC investment into the UK comes from corporates, private equity firms, angel investors amongst others.

Explore this data here on the Dealroom platform.

Investors

The UK is the centre of the European venture market, home to 40% of the continent’s venture capital, and London is the European base of choice for top international funds.

The UK investor talent pool is deeper than ever, and VCs are raising 20x what they did 20 years ago.

Top Investors

Explore the data for the most active investors into the UK startup ecosystem as well as the most active UK based investors here on the Dealroom platform.

New Funds raised

UK VCs have more dry powder than ever before.

Explore the data on new VC firms headquartered in the UK here on the Dealroom platform.

Unicorns

The UK startup ecosystem has minted 185+ unicorns and is home to 200+ future unicorns.

After the peak in new unicorn creation in 2021, the creation of both new unicorn and future unicorns has slowed down significantly, signalling that new unicorns are once again becoming rare beasts.

International comparisons

Country benchmarking

The UK's startup ecosystem ranks 3rd globally in terms of VC investment raised, a position it has maintained since 2019 with the exception of 2021.

See below global country rankings:

The UK has consistently also led the European continent by a comfortable margin:

City Benchmarking

London is the #1 funded tech ecosystem in Europe. Benchmark London against other leading European tech hubs in the chart below.