Silicon Valley titan bets £2bn on Britain
1,600 jobs created as Salesforce sparks day of investment in UK tech
AN AMERICAN internet group is spearheading a £2.2bn investment bonanza into the British tech industry, it was revealed last night.
Salesforce – one of the world’s biggest companies – will lead the spending spree by ploughing £1.9bn into the UK, creating 900 jobs.
It marks the latest in a series of major investments in the UK by the giants of Silicon Valley.
Facebook is increasing its British workforce by 50pc to more than 2,300 by the end of this year, while Google’s base in London will see the number of staff working there rise to 7,000.
And Amazon has said it will create 2,500 jobs in the UK this year, with Apple planning a London head office at the redeveloped Battersea Power Station that can house up to 3,000 employees.
On top of the investment by Salesforce, which is a leader in cloud computing services, the sovereign wealth fund of United Arab Emirates revealed that it would invest £300m and Japanese IT firm NTT Data said it would pump in £41m.
The cash boost yesterday, creating 1,600 jobs, came as the Government was boasting at London Tech Week of the UK’s credentials as Europe’s biggest hub of technology companies.
Last night the Government also unveiled £2.5bn of ‘patient capital’ – a type of investment fund that backs start-up firms expected to deliver bumper returns over the long term.
San Francisco-based Salesforce has taken nine floors at Bishopsgate, in London’s third-tallest skyscraper. It helps organisations introduce technology into their workplaces, with customers including Addison Lee, Aston Martin, British Airways, Funding Circle and the DVLA. Overall its expansion is expected to create 900 jobs, a spokesman said.
Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive, said: ‘The UK is Salesforce’s largest market in Europe and our commitment to driving growth, innovation and customer success in the region has never been stronger.’
The Government said several other firms had announced investments as part of their discussions with the Prime Minister.
This included £ 31.5m from Cubic Transportation Systems to expand operations and research in the UK, £17m from World Wide Generation for social housing contracts, £7.2m from Orbital Micro Systems for a UK headquarters and Scottish manufacturing site and £1.6m from Telefonica and the University of Edinburgh towards a centre to help start-ups using blockchain technology. IT group Fujitsu is to open a centre in London and Funding Circle UK will hire 200 more UK staff.
The announcements follow warnings that Britain’s tech sector would suffer because of the vote in 2016 to leave the EU.
However, figures last week showed investment continued to flow in, with the UK attracting more than double the amount of closest rival Germany.
Speaking at London Tech Week, Facebook’s UK and Ireland boss Steve Hatch said the firm’s first major office outside the US had been opened in London.
He said Facebook is living proof that the UK ‘is a hotbed of innovation and also has the highest level of investment in Europe’ adding: ‘That is why we came here and it is why we will stay.’