Overview of deep tech spin out report
We have recently published the 6th annual Spotlight on Spinouts, our data-driven assessment of how UK universities are translating research into commercial ventures. UK university spinouts are now valued at £49 billion, nearly triple their 2020 value. Since 2010, around 2,000 spinout companies have been created in the UK, generating 27,000 jobs 70% of them in the last five years alone. The UK leads Europe in absolute spinout value, a genuinely impressive story. But it is also an incomplete one.
The growth in UK spinout value is not evenly distributed. Ninety-six percent of the total comes from deep tech companies working in life sciences, AI, quantum and adjacent sectors. It is a structural truth about where value gets created when the underlying asset is research-grade intellectual property, and where the UK has genuine competitive advantage.
Deep tech spinouts matter to the UK economy. They convert decades of public investment in university research into durable, hard-to-replicate businesses. They anchor technical talent in the UK. They generate sovereign capability in sectors such as quantum, advanced materials and synthetic biology. The acquisition of OrganOx for $1.5 billion , and Oxford Ionics for $1.1 billion in 2025 illustrates that UK research can scale to globally competitive exits.
The pace problem
The average UK spinout takes 12 to 18 months to launch from the point a founder decides to commercialise their research. While a founding team spends a year navigating IP negotiations, equity structures and institutional processes, competitors in the US and increasingly in parts of Europe are moving. The window for first-mover advantage in deep tech is critical, and we are losing time in administrative friction. We are also losing talent. How many founders do we lose along the way, because they decide the process is too complex or slow? We endlessly assess our known spinouts, but I’m not aware of any studies that assess how many potential founders learn of the hurdles and opt out.
Universities are beginning to move in the right direction. Average equity stakes taken at spinout have fallen to around 16%, the lowest recorded in a decade, down from 22–25% in the period before the 2023 reforms. Credit should be given to the universities for reducing equity stakes so significantly in a relatively short period. The top quartile is now equal to what was the bottom quartile in 2015, with the distribution falling from 31% to 11.
Reducing excessive institutional equity makes spinouts more fundable and gives founders meaningful upside. But the process of getting there still takes too long, and the outcome remains too variable.
Equity for software spinouts sits at around 17%, against government guidance recommending 10% or less. That gap is costing the UK companies and talent.
Geography of innovation is changing
The 2026 report reflects a spinout landscape that is becoming more geographically diverse. The University of Bristol appears in the European top ten for the first time, ranked fourth in the UK and sixth across Europe the highest-ranked institution outside Oxford, Cambridge and London. Strong regional growth is also emerging across the North of England, the Midlands and Scotland.
The Regional Enterprise Hubs that the Academy operates in Newcastle, Liverpool, Sheffield, Swansea, Belfast and Glasgow are precisely to provide place-based support that reflects local research strengths, local networks and local economic need. Ecosystem-building cannot be concentrated in the Golden Triangle.
Oxford and Cambridge continue to dominate both the volume and value of spinouts. Bristol's rise is significant. But it should prompt us to ask what equivalent talent is still sitting unlocked in institutions across the North, the Midlands and Scotland that lack the same commercialisation infrastructure.
Diversity problem
A decade ago, women were involved in just 7% of UK spinouts as founders. Today, that figure stands at 17% a meaningful increase that reflects sustained effort across the sector. But the trajectory has stalled. The improvement seen between 2015 and 2020 has not been maintained. In 2026, 83% of UK spinouts still have all-male founding teams.
That is not a pipeline problem. The research talent exists. What is missing is the structural support, mentorship, networks, and funding needed to convert capable researchers into founders. When we limit who builds the next generation of deep tech companies, we limit the ideas those companies pursue and the problems they choose to solve.
The ecosystem has to move together
No single institution, programme or policy reform will close these gaps. The challenge is systemic, and the response has to be too.
Universities need to continue reducing equity stakes and accelerating commercialisation processes. The goal is not merely compliance with guidance but building an environment where a researcher with a genuinely world-class idea chooses to build their company in the UK, quickly and with confidence.
Investors need to move earlier and with more conviction into the deep tech sectors where the UK has structural advantage. The £17 billion raised across 3,788 equity deals since 2015 demonstrates investor appetite. What is needed now is more capital at the formation stage
Government needs to maintain and strengthen the policy environment that makes this possible from the reform of university spinout terms to the tax and incentive structures that keep growing deep tech companies headquartered in the UK. Exits like OrganOx and Oxford Ionics demonstrate that scale is achievable, we need to ensure conditions exist to retain more of that value onshore.
And the broader ecosystem including professional service firms, angel networks, regional development bodies and innovation districts needs to treat spinout support as a collective responsibility, not something outsourced to universities alone. The Academy's own Enterprise Hub model, working regionally and without a stake in the companies we support, has demonstrated what independent, founder-centred support can deliver over more than a decade.
The Academy's role
We believe evidence-based accountability is part of what national academies are for. The Spotlight on Spinouts series began as a data-gathering exercise in 2021. It is now the most comprehensive annual analysis of the UK spinout landscape tracking value creation, regional distribution, equity structures, diversity and exit performance across institutions and time. Our Enterprise Hub is recognised by the Financial Times and Sifted as the UK's leading startup hub this year.
That track record does not make us complacent. It reinforces how much more there is still to do. The UK is, genuinely, the leading deep tech spinout ecosystem in Europe. That should not be a reason for complacency. It is a foundation to build from faster, wider and more inclusively than we have managed so far.
What needs to happen now
The findings from Spotlight on Spinouts 2026 point to three clear priorities. We need to:
- Reduce the time from research to spinout launch. Many researcher contracts don’t last that long. Universities, technology transfer offices and investors need to work together to create streamlined commercialisation pathways that cut friction without cutting rigour.
- Increase the flow of better-structured capital, into deep tech spinouts at formation and early growth stages. The sectors that account for 96% of UK spinout value are capital-intensive and long-cycle. The funding environment needs to match that reality.
- Address the diversity gap with the same urgency we apply to economic performance, because the evidence consistently shows that more diverse founding teams build more resilient companies. The 83% all-male founding team figure is a systemic failure. If female researchers were encouraged and supported to spinout at the same rate, we would nearly double the sector overnight. Closing that gap represents one of the biggest untapped opportunities to strengthen the UK's innovation economy.
The UK's spinout ecosystem is one of the most valuable assets we have in the global competition for industrial leadership in deep tech. The Academy will keep measuring it, publishing the evidence, and using our position to push for the changes it needs. That means universities, investors, government and organisations like the Royal Academy of engineering working together to act with the urgency this opportunity demands.
Browse more articles
Breaking through the barriers: Why deep tech needs a new playbook
Why do so many promising deep tech companies struggle to scale? And what we can do about it? A panel of experts propose…
More than a milestone: what being named the UK’s top startup hub really means
The Enterprise Hub being named the UK’s top startup hub by the Financial Times and Statista is an incredible honour. Bu…
From research to unicorn: building a world-leading quantum engineering company
From university spinout to a $1.075 billion acquisition in just six years, Oxford Ionics has become one of the UK’s mo…