British tech start-ups flourish as investors pile in

More than 10,000 new tech firms opened for business in the UK last year – an increase of 60% on 2016. At the same time, US companies invested a record amount of money in the booming British tech sector.

According to audit firm RSM, a total of 10,016 software development and programming businesses were incorporated in the UK in 2017, compared with just 6,300 the year before.

The credit for the tech surge is partly down to academic excellence, with British universities now playing a “key role in developing and nurturing exceptional talent”, said RSM’s David Blacher.

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Increased US investment, meanwhile, is enough to “knock back claims that international investors would turn their backs on the UK’s technology companies after the Brexit vote”, says The Daily Telegraph.

Silicon Valley put £1.1bn into British technology firms in 2017, according to law firm Pennington Manches, which compiled a report on the investment using the Beahurst database of tech start-ups. East Coast US firms invested a further £1.3bn, also a record.

American investors, who were behind one third of investment in UK tech start-ups last year, cited the skills they found in the UK as the biggest reason to put their money into the country.

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