A policy stocktake: tech scale-ups

Last week, London Tech Week and the Spending Review broughtmuch energy to the tech sector (over 30,000 people set foot in Olympia alone!). But as we await the UK government’s 'full' growth offer – including the delivery of the modern industrial strategy, time for a policy stocktake.

So, where do we stand, and what's been announced?

The UK remains an exciting place to innovate and build a tech business and is still the leading European nation for tech investment. Tech Nation’s annual report, released last week, revealed that the UK tech sector has now reached $1.2 trillion valuation. NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang also recognised this and pledged support for the UK's booming AI startup ecosystem with a £1.5bn investment.

The government’s Spending Review doesn't just allocate funds - it sets direction. This is done through budgets for individual departments spending for the next three years. Important to note that the government will also review the Spending Review in 2027, and departments will now be working through business cases for funding.

Now, for the government's full growth offer:

Just over a year ago, I wrote about the steps needed for the UK to build the next tech giant. Many of these asks still stand. Ultimately, high-growth businesses will be the engines of growth in high-growth sectors and should be at the core of the UK government’s economic and industrial strategy, and full growth offer.

Take some of our recent success stories – where an entrepreneurial mindset married with an innovative idea and investment to successfully scale a pioneering idea and bring this to market. techUK member Quantexa secured historic Series F funding to advance AI-driven decision intelligence. They are making an impact across government agencies to prevent fraud and modernise services using analytics and AI. Multiverse, the first ever EdTech unicorn recieved record-breaking funding and continue to support the development of AI-enabled workforces through upskilling and reskilling.

We consistently hear that tech founders have a strong basis to start from and begin the initial growth stages of their business. But success musn’t breed complacency and challenges remain, including high energy costs, difficulty securing the right talent and a level playing field for procurement.

In the upcoming Tech Sector Plan, the government has an opportunity to focus on 'scale' across emerging technologies. These don’t have to be high-cost measures but a signal of commitment and intent to support, and recognise, the role these businesses play.

You can view techUK’s key recommendations for scale-ups via our Scale-Up Action Plan report.

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techUK helps our members understand, engage and influence the development of digital and tech policy in the UK and beyond. We support our members to understand some of the most complex and thorny policy questions that confront our sector. Visit the programme page here.