Embracing the UK's Scale-Up Opportunity
techUK is the UK’s leading technology trade association, representing over 1,100 members. According to Beauhurst data, more than 110 techUK members have ever been classified as scale-ups, over 30 of which have reached scale-up status in the last two years and over 30 additional members currently feature on high-growth lists. Consequently, we are deeply invested in ensuring that businesses choose not just to start in the UK, but also to scale and stay in this country.
With deep relationships across Whitehall, Westminster, the devolved nations, combined authorities and industry, techUK engages directly with government departments, parliamentarians, and key public bodies including public finance institutions and regulators to push for the pro-scale-up policies that matter. We take your stories, your challenges, and your ambitions straight to the people with the power to act on them.
Meet the Scalers
Building on the successful launch of Meet the Scalers in 2025, this year we're putting more scale-up stories front and centre. Meet the Scalers is back with our new video series featuring interviews with some of techUK's scale-up and other high-growth members. techUK is proud to have scale-up members from across the eight Industrial Strategy sectors (IS-8) – from life sciences to defence, financial services to AI – and throughout the UK’s nations and regions.
Meet the Scalers will spotlight the people behind the scale-up companies, the factors that have enabled their rapid growth to date, and recommendations to unlock further growth. These aren't just stories, they're the evidence base for techUK’s policy asks to government, making the case for a UK that is genuinely built for scale. Watch and share – and if you're a scale-up ready to tell your story, we want to hear from you.
Policy Priorities for UK Tech Scale-Ups
techUK advocates for strong pro-scale policies across areas including capital, talent, regulation, procurement and international & trade. Below we set out an initial set of policy asks to government in each of these areas. We will continue to refine these policy asks through the ‘Meet the Scalers’ interview series and our regular engagement with the tech sector and the government, as we prepare for the Budget this Autumn:
| Capital | Talent | Regulation | Procurement | International & Trade |
| Extend company age limits for the EIS and VCT schemes to support companies outside London, which generally take longer to scale. | Reform the scale-up visa to cut costs, accelerate decision-making and raise awareness of the visa. | Establish a commercialisation of tech taskforce within the Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO) to proactively identify market opportunities and streamline regulation. | Leverage public procurement to support scale-ups by successfully meeting departmental targets for expenditure on SMEs and improving preliminary market engagement with scale-ups | Provide targeted support to high-potential exporters, connecting UK-based scale-ups with global customers. |
| Set a target for public finance institutions such as the National Wealth Fund to support late-stage funding rounds (Series C+), helping to close the scale-up funding gap | Offer relief on national insurance contributions (NICs) for qualifying knowledge-intensive companies as recent NICs increases have made it more difficult for scaling companies to hire. | Create specialist scale-up support units in key economic regulators, modelled on the FCA's Scale-Up Unit, to support scaling firms to overcome regulatory barriers related to their expansion | Expand the use of Advanced Market Commitments (AMCs) to provide greater market certainty to innovative scale-ups | Negotiate access to the Scaleup Europe Fund, unlocking late-stage growth capital for UK scale-ups in strategic technologies |
A community built for growth
Capital | Talent | Regulation | Procurement | International and Trade
Connections that support scale-up growth
When you join techUK, you join a community of scale-ups and other members who understand your challenges and share your ambitions. You get access to cross-sector networks, senior government relationships, and a platform that puts your business in front of the right people - investors, policymakers, and industry leaders. From our Meet the Investors series with the British Business Bank to sector-focused roundtables and networking opportunities, techUK connects you to the partnerships that accelerate your growth.
Scale-up members
Below is a sample of techUK’s scale-up and high-growth members, based on Beauhurst data. It includes techUK members that reached scale-up status in the past 2 years or are included in a current high-growth list. ‘Scale-up’ refers to companies growing at either the 10% or 20% sustained growth rates.:
techUK Report
Last year, supported by the Scale-up Institute, techUK published our Scale-Up Action Plan which outlines how supporting UK tech scale-ups is essential to driving national economic growth. The report emphasises scale-ups’ role as engines of economic growth: despite making up less than 0.6% of the UK’s SME population, scale-ups account for over 55% of UK SME output. The plan, developed with industry stakeholders, identifies four key challenge areas - access to customers and markets, finance, talent, and diversity - and proposes targeted government interventions for each, such as a dedicated concierge service for scaling businesses, reforms to funding schemes like EIS and VCT, improvements to the scale-up worker visa, and better data collection on diverse founders. Overall, the plan calls on the UK Government to streamline and coordinate its support to help tech scale-ups fulfil their potential domestically rather than being driven to seek growth opportunities overseas.
Upcoming techUK events for Scale-ups
Opening defence to SMEs: Office for Small Business Growth introduction
London and online Industry Briefing
Meet the team
Antony Walker
Antony Walker
Antony Walker is deputy CEO of techUK, which he played a lead role in launching in November 2013.
Antony is a member of the senior leadership team and has overall responsibility for techUK’s policy work. Prior to his appointment in July 2012 Antony was chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), the UK’s independent advisory group on broadband policy. Antony was closely involved in the development of broadband policy development in the UK since the BSG was established in 2001 and authored several major reports to government. He also led the development of the UK’s world leading Open Internet Code of Practice that addresses the issue of net neutrality in the UK. Prior to setting up the BSG, Antony spent six years working in Brussels for the American Chamber of Commerce following and writing about telecoms issues and as a consultant working on EU social affairs and environmental issues. Antony is a graduate of Aberdeen University and KU Leuven and is also a Policy Fellow Alumni of the Centre for Science and Policy at Cambridge University.
- Email:
- [email protected]
- LinkedIn:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonywalker/
Edward Emerson
Edward Emerson
Edward leads the Digital Economy programme at techUK, which includes our work on online safety, fraud, and regulation for growth initiatives.
He has prior experience working for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and has previously worked for a number of public affairs consultancies specialising in research and strategy, working with leading clients in the technology and financial services sectors.
- Email:
- [email protected]
- LinkedIn:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-emerson-009189183
