Ouch: Three tech firms bail out of the UK in a single day
The Prime Minister did his best to sound bullish about the future of the UK tech sector yesterday as he opened London Tech Week. Some awkward technical issues with his autocue didn’t put him off his stride as he declared that Britain was “unequivocally, unashamedly and defiantly open for business.”
Leaving aside the bizarre idea of being “defiantly open” his rhetoric was brought to life in a very real way by the news that no fewer than three UK tech firms were at that very moment in the process of being snapped up by US investors.
Alphawave, a rare example of a semiconductor company listed in the UK, has moved another step closer to being taken over by US rival Qualcomm after the board recommended the deal to shareholders based on a valuation of just under £2bn.
Then came news that the UK listed precision equipment specialist Spectris received a takeover bid from US private equity outfit Advent, valuing the firm at around £3.5bn. Open for business, indeed.
Meanwhile, an Oxford university spinout, quantum computing startup Oxford Ionics, has agreed to a $1.1bn takeover by US-based rival IonQ. This trio of tech takeovers comes just days after UK fintech darling Wise announced it would shift its primary listing to the US in search of growth.
There was some good news yesterday, in the form of some supportive words from Nvidia boss Jensen Huang, who described the UK’s AI ecosystem as “nearly perfect for take-off” – if only it had the data centres, something Starmer has vowed to deliver. Nvidia also announced plans to “lean in” to the UK’s AI sector with a new industry forum to support experimentation and expansion. Founding members include BAE Systems, BT, Babcock, National Grid and Standard Chartered.
This is a welcome development, but it’s quite separate from the wider issue of fast-growth tech firms abandoning the UK in favour of great opportunities abroad. We have no shortage of incredible tech startups and fast-growing tech businesses in this country – across sectors including finance, AI, life sciences and manufacturing – but something has gone seriously wrong if the UK isn’t viewed as a logical or attractive market in which to grow from startup to scale-up and from scale-up to industry leader.
This isn’t a problem of Starmer’s making, but it’s getting worse on his watch and it must be confronted.