Dundee secures a bigger slice of the spin-out cake
5 Jan 2022
Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London may lead the way as the UK universities with the most spin-out companies but the third most successful firm of the last decade hails from a less high-profile Scottish institution.
Artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery company Exscientia, which boasts a market valuation of £784.5 million was founded at the University of Dundee and ranks for commercial success behind only Oxford University’s Oxford Nanopore and Ceres Power, founded at Imperial.
The data, derived from a report by R&D tax experts GovGrant, confirms Oxbridge’s domination of the market overall for spin-offs – companies commercialising academic innovation.
Oxford University maintins pole position followed by Cambridge, then Imperial and UCL. However Scots universities are prominently featured, thanks to Edinburgh in joint fifth place, Glasgow in ninth place and newcomer Strathclyde tenth.
When it comes to overall value however, Imperial edges ahead of Cambridge with £2.7 billion produced by its companies to Cambridge’s £2.6 billion (a figure matched by UCL). Both are dwarfed by Oxford’s £6.4 billion.
Pharma and biotech is the sector that features most prominently, accounting for the last 20 years for over half (£6.1 billion) of all capital raised by university spinouts in the UK.
