The University of Oxford is top of a league table of the most successful European spin-out centres for Deep Tech. Oxford is named as the European university which has created the most spin-out value in the sector in a recent report by Dealroom.co, an Amsterdam-based global provider of data and intelligence on startups and tech ecosystems.
Deep Tech is defined in the report as ‘novel scientific or engineering breakthroughs making their way into products and companies for the first time’. The key sectors include space tech, AI, future of computing, novel energy, computational biology, and robotics – all areas where Oxfordshire-based companies excel. The emerging Digital & Technologies Sector Plan of the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy also places great emphasis upon these sectors.
The report notes that the share of funding going to Deep Tech has risen by 2.5 times in the last decade. Deep Tech attracted significantly more funding in 2024 than any other sector including life sciences and fintech. Since 2023, Deep Tech has been attracting nearly a third of venture capital funding – a record share. Deep Tech companies raise more capital than regular tech at every stage of development, and require more time and patience of investors.
The report shows that Oxford University has a higher number of Series A+ startups and future unicorns and has been given an overall score of 814, above second-placed ETH Zurich with 776. Cambridge University is in third place with 692.
Examples of successful Oxford spinouts cited by the report include Oxford Nanopore, which uses AI to make a novel generation of DNA/RNA sequencing technology. It became a unicorn when it was valued at £3.4 billion (about $4.6 billion) as it floated on the London Stock Exchange in September 2021 and currently has a market capitalisation of $960 million. Another spinout featured, in the novel energy sector, is Didcot-based Tokamak Energy which last year raised $125 million in growth equity.
UK leads in Deep Tech funding
Within Europe, the UK attracted most Deep Tech funding at $4.2 billion in 2024, ahead of France ($3 billion) and Germany ($2.7 billion). The report notes that within the sector, late stage funding for scaling-up tends to come not from European investors but from the USA and the Middle East. Oxford Nanopore’s recent investors have come from China, Australia and Singapore, while Tokamak Energy’s 2024 funding round was led by UK and Italian investors, and attracted funding from companies in Singapore, Japan, and Turkey.
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