UK tech sector megafirms going from strength to strength
THE UK’s tech sector is now home to 13 so called ‘decacorns - firms with valuations in excess of $10bn.
Ten of the firms, include tech focus car to insurance group and Wales’ only FSTE 100 firm Admiral, are listed.
While for listed decacorns their market capitalisations are constantly changing due to share price movements, the valuations of the 13 are:
Markit, which focuses on big data - $46.9bn;
WorldPay - fintech - $43bn; Checkout.com -fintech - $40bn; Revolut - fintech - $33bn; ARM - semiconductors - $31.7bn; FNZ - fintech - $20bn;
Wise - fintech -$15.3bn; Rapyd - fintech - $15bn Ocado Group - e-commerce - $14.1bn;
Admiral Group fintech $11.3bn;
Global Switch - data centres - $10.6bn; eToro - fintech -$10.4bn; Deliveroo - e-commerce - $10bn. The number of UK decacorns is double that of Germany (6) and three times that of Sweden (4). And the level is set to expand significantly the next few years with 14 UK companies with current valuations of between $5bn and $10bn that are expected to become the next decacorns.
These include cyber security company Synk, zero-emissions transport company Arrival and virtual events platform Hopin.
UK Government Digital Minister Chris Philp said: “The UK tech industry has gone from strength to strength in the past few years and all this hard work and dedication is paying off now that it’s become the third ecosystem in the world to reach $1 trillion in value. It’s brilliant to see how every tech company in the UK, from early-stage startup to global leading decacorn, has a part to play in lifting up the ecosystem and making it thrive.”
Latest figures from UK’s Digital Economy Council, and crunched by
Dealroom, shows the UK tech sector now has a value worth $1 trillion -becoming only the third in the world to ever reach this landmark valuation behind the US and China.
In 2018, the UK tech ecosystem was valued at $446bn and was steadily growing until 2020 when it surged 42% to $942bn because of increased investment activity into digital tools during the start of the Covid 19 pandemic and an active stock market. This has helped to catapult the valuations of many companies from unicorns - companies valued at $1bn or more - to the rarer decacorns spot, for companies worth over $10bn or more. The value of $1 trillion was achieved in March this year.
Gerard Grech, chief executive, Tech Nation said: “This is a watershed moment for UK tech. The industry has gone through difficult global challenges and come out stronger than ever. Ten years ago people said there weren’t enough startups in the UK. Five years ago people said there weren’t enough scale-ups. Every day, innovative and experimental tech companies are being launched across the UK that will grow into the next generation of unicorns and decacorn and we at Tech Nation are committed to supporting and fuelling these highpotential businesses across the whole country.”