UK universities have also reduced their average equity stakes to new a new low.
UK university spinouts secured £2.6bn ($3.4bn) in funding in 2024, a 38% increase from the £1.89bn raised a year before, indicating renewed investor confidence in spinouts, a report by the Royal Academy of Engineering and data platform Beauhurst showed.
The uptick in investor interest in UK spinouts compares with the wider equity market for high-growth companies, which faced a 19% fall in investment last year.
The report revealed UK universities took the lowest average stake in their spinouts of 16.1% in 2024, down from an average of 21.5% in 2023, according to the report. This is in line with the government-backed Independent Review guidelines introduced last year to encourage researchers to commercialise their academic work and make spinouts more attractive to investors.
Strong investor interest in deep tech, AI and life sciences, which spinouts typically focus on, was attributed to the increased investment in university research after year-on-year funding reductions in 2022 and 2023.
The universities of Oxford and Cambridge led the way as top academic institutions that spinouts emerged from. The University of Oxford spun out 225 companies between 2011 and 2025, while the University of Cambridge spun out 175 over the same period.
The University of Oxford has consistently led the ranking over the past decade. As of January 2025, it has generated 15 more spinouts from last year (7.1%), mainly through investor partnerships with Oxford Science Enterprise (OSE), its affiliated investment fund.
The report revealed the average equity stakes taken by a selected group of academic institutions since 2011. The lowest average stake was taken by Royal College of Art at 6.3%, while the University of Leeds took an average equity position of 38.1%.
