The latest global technology industry data comes from a report issued by Tech Nation in association with the World Economic Forum (“U.K. Tech on the Global Stage”). Data for the report was drawn from Companies House, GitHub, the OECD, Pitchbook and Streetbees.
Considering the global trends for technology investment, as well as the dominant position of the U.S., the report indicates that China and India are also big players, coming in at second and third spot. The U.S. accounted for around $100 billion in high-growth scaleup investment between 2015 and 2018. This was double the rate of China and five times the rate of India.
Within Europe, it is the U.K. which is leading Europe in scaleup investment, ploughing in around $8 billion over the 2015 to 2018 period. It also stands that in 2018, total venture capital investment in U.K. technology topped $4 billion, which was far more than any other European country. In particular with the U.K., there was high growth firms in London, which rose by over 56 percent in 2018, which is a growth faster than anywhere else in the world and ahead of Lehi, Tokyo and San Francisco.
With the second placed city on the list – Lehi, Utah, this city recorded an eight-week growth rate of 33 percent, reflecting the area’s shift away from an agricultural economy and transitioning to a technological economy. The city accommodations Micron’s microchip plant, Intel’s headquarters, plus the offices of Adobe Systems, Ancestry.com and Microsoft.
In terms of employment, unsurprisingly given its dominant position, the U.S. remains the world’s largest technology sector employer at 35 percent of the global scaleup workforce. The types of areas that people in tech professions are working with are e-commerce (at 27 percent), followed by cybersecurity (13 percent), software-as-a-service (10 percent) and Internet of Things (9 percent).
Commenting on the main survey findings, Lesley Eccles, Board Member of Tech Nation tells Digital Journal that in relation to growth in the U.K.: “Having built companies on both sides of the Atlantic, and having lived in New York and Edinburgh, the U.K. has always shown promising signs of tech success. The findings from the Tech Nation report are evidence that the U.K. is living up to expectations, for a country with just 0.6 percent of the world’s population, the U.K. last year attracted 5.2 percent of global scaleup investment, 2.5 times the relative size of the economy. This firmly positions the UK as a global tech leader.”
