Half of the spinouts from the universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey raised seed funding in 2024.
Spinouts emerging from a group of six universities in the UK’s southwest, known as the SETSquared Partnership, raised £273m ($351m) in 2024, double the equivalent raised in the previous year.
The funding was secured by 43 spinouts from the universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey.
“It’s an exciting time for UK spinouts. With market and government interest in them at an all-time high, spinouts are being recognised as essential engines of innovation, growth and economic prosperity,” said Marty Reid, executive director of SETSquared.
Other UK universities are also seeing increased spinout activity. UCL Business, the technology transfer arm of University College London, reported a 24.5% jump in academics seeking to commercialise research in the fiscal year 2023 to 2024 compared with the previous year.
Spinouts from universities in the SETSquared partnership that raised investment in 2024 include Naturbeads, a University of Bath spinout developing natural and biodegradable microspheres made from cellulose to replace microplastics. It raised £7.8m in 2024.
Forefront RF, spun out of the University of Bristol, raised £16m in 2024 to develop its fabless semiconductor technology that simplifies mobile radio front-end designs in smartphones, wearables and other IoT devices with a tuneable duplexer.
Senisca, from the University of Exeter, raised £3.7m in 2024 to develop a new generation of senotherapeutic interventions to treat age-related disease.
