UK’s $13 billion technology scene may already have peaked

London’s Old Street gyratory, where Hackney meets the City financial district, has been jammed with traffic for the best part of a year. That’s the unhappy result of refurbishments to the area known as Silicon Roundabout, where young UK technology companies are concentrated. By the time that work is complete – years, at this rate – the domestic startup scene may well be on the wane.

Venture investors, presumably using e-scooters to skip the congestion, poured $13.2 billion into British technology companies in 2019, according to a report by Tech Nation and Dealroom for the government’s Digital Economy Council. That marked a 44 percent increase on 2018, even as the equivalent figure for the US plunged 20 percent to $116 billion.

The UK can thank its specialty in financial technology: companies including Greensill, OakNorth, Monzo and Checkout.com accounted for two-fifths of the total money raised last year, and contributed about two-thirds of the overall growth.

The result is that UK startups have all but closed a long-standing funding gap with their American cousins, at least relative to the size of the two economies. The UK’s venture-capital investments last year equalled 0.48 percent of GDP, double the average of 0.24 percent from 2014-18.

Startups in the US last year raked in 0.54 percent of GDP, roughly the same proportion as in Britain, having averaged 0.42 percent from 2014-18.

Can the UK sustain USstyle levels of technology investment? It’s doubtful.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to introduce tighter immigration controls after pulling the UK out of the European Union. If he does that ham-fistedly it could cap future growth, since almost two in five directors of tech companies have non-British nationality, according to Tech Nation.

Johnson also promised to tilt the UK’s economic growth model away from the capital. Startups may worry, since they tend to benefit from “agglomeration,” or the concentration of skills in one place. Brexit also endangers the UK’s share of EU startup funding.

Meanwhile neighbors like France and Germany are courting entrepreneurs with aggressive state funding, and cuts to taxes and red tape. French venture investments have risen faster than those in the UK since 2014.

London’s entrepreneurs may find that you can go the wrong way around a roundabout.

The author is Liam Proud, Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The article was first published on Reuters Breakingviews. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn