As software chief Matthew Scullion spoke to a room of capital market bigwigs at the London Stock Exchange last summer, there was an audible intake of breath.
Scullion – a member of the Julia Hogget-led Capital Markets Industry Taskforce – had just revealed that of the $305m (£243m) his software firm Matillion had raised from investors, just $5m (£4m) had come from the UK. The rest had been pumped in from cashed up investors overseas.
The huge gap laid bare the scale of the challenge facing the UK as it looks to unlock a wave of cash from investors and allow high-growth tech companies to attract the cash they need to grow domestically.
“The aggression and ambition and play book that you learn from [raising money in the US] is, from what I’ve seen, completely different the way that we generally go about it in the UK,” Scullion warned.
Those fears look as if they have reared their head again this week as Wayve raised the largest AI-related funding round in UK – and European – history.
The record $1bn (£837m) investment was, understandably, trumpeted as a Great British business success story. The Cambridge-founded firm, which develops autonomous driving technology, is a genuine market leader in a sector that could define future mobility. And the fact that its potential was being recognised with such a punchy investment round was—to quote Rishi Sunak—a reflection of the UK’s status as an “AI superpower.”