The United Kingdom witnessed a venture capital (VC) funding value touching $6.8 billion during the January-May 2024 period, as per research and analytics company GlobalData.
This indicates a 1.6 percent year-over-year (YoY) increase in VC funding value from January to May 2024, despite the transaction volume showing a YoY fall of 17.3 percent. According to the data, there were about 601 venture capital deals made during the mentioned period, with a reported funding value of $6.7 billion.
Aurojyoti Bose, lead analyst at GlobalData, said the decline experienced in deal volume in the UK during January-May 2024 was in line with the global trend, wherein top markets such as the US and China also witnessed a fall in the number of deals.
“In the meantime, the improvement in terms of value recorded during the first five months of 2024 could be attributed to the announcement of two billion-dollar deals (valued more than or equal to $1 billion) in May,” he added.
Some prominent deals
Among several notable venture capital funding deals made in the UK between January and May 2024 included $1 billion in funding secured by Wayve, $1 billion in capital raised by Abound, $431 million raised by Monzo, $112 million raised by Exohood Labs, $110 million secured by Skyports, and $110 million raised by Build A Rocket Boy.
“The UK stands as the top European market for VC funding activity and was also among the top five markets globally both in terms of VC deals volume and value during January-May 2024,” said Bose.
The UK accounted for 7.2 percent of all VC transactions announced globally, and its share of the equivalent reported funding amount was 6.5 percent during the first five months of 2024.
UK leads in GenAI startups in Europe
According to a survey conducted by venture capital firm Accel, the UK has the greatest number of generative AI (GenAI) startups in Europe, followed by Germany and Israel. After analyzing 221 GenAI firms, Accel discovered that 30 percent were based in the UK, 14 percent in Germany, and 13 percent in Israel. The Netherlands and France accounted for 11 percent and 6 percent of all founding countries, respectively.
GenAI is an artificial intelligence that can create text, pictures, videos and other types of data using models built from massive amounts of data.
The top universities in UK, its history of founding the AI business Deepmind in 2010, and the investment made by American tech entrepreneurs in the country has helped the nation boost its AI industry.
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