UK Startup Funding Data 2019-2026: 6.7k Rounds

Key findings

1. 4,099 companies raised 6,676 rounds between 2019 and mid-2026. 5,551 rounds disclosed an amount, totalling $161.0B.
2. 2021 was the busiest year, with 1,189 rounds. Disclosed funding in 2025 was $16.3B, 1.1× the 2019 level ($15.5B).
3. Mega-rounds dominate the dollars. Rounds of US$100M or more are 8% of rounds with a disclosed amount, but 62% of disclosed dollars.
4. Early rounds got bigger. The median Seed round went from $2.0M in 2019 to $4.1M in 2025; the median Series A from $7.5M to $12.0M.
5. Funding is concentrated. The top three cities (London, Cambridge, Bristol) hold 70% of disclosed dollars.
6. The fastest-rising sectors (share of rounds, 2019–2020 vs 2024–2025): Energy Tech (3.4% → 5.4%), Business Services (4.2% → 6.1%), Healthtech (4.7% → 6.5%).
7. By nation, England holds 96.4% of disclosed dollars ($151.0B); Scotland $3.8B (2.4%, 451 rounds), Wales $1.2B (0.7%, 122 rounds), Northern Ireland $773.6M (0.5%, 85 rounds).

Funding by year

Full data. 2026 covers January to June.

Round size by stage

Most active investors (top 50)

Rounds each investor joined, full data. Organisations only; aliases such as "Accel" and "Accel Partners" are merged.

Largest disclosed rounds (top 50)

Most funded companies (top 50)

Sum of disclosed round amounts, full data. Amounts that failed the source-sentence check are excluded, so totals for the very largest companies are understated.

Top 30 cities by disclosed funding

Funding by nation

Nation from the company record or, failing that, its city; known for 98% of rounds.

Sectors (top 40 by rounds)

Column dictionary

20 columns in the sample CSV.

Method

1. Extraction. Radar's pipeline reads each funding article and extracts structured fields from it, including the source sentence.
2. Scope. Venture-style instruments only (pre-seed to Series H, growth/PE, bridge, convertible notes, venture debt, grants, strategic). IPOs, QIPs, private placements, rights issues, bank loans, bonds and acquisitions are dropped. Companies founded in 2000 or later; rounds after a company's IPO and group subsidiaries of large conglomerates are excluded.
3. Deduplication. Reports about the same company and stage within 45 days are one round. A round repeating an earlier amount within 180 days is dropped, as are lettered stages below one already announced (recaps). One round filed under two domains of the same company is merged.
4. Amount check. Each amount is compared with the money figures parsed from its source sentence (tolerance 0.6–1.7×). verified matched; unchecked had no parseable figure; failed_check is blank because it did not match, exceeded a stage ceiling, or was a $500M+ figure reported by one article only; not_disclosed had no amount.
5. Currency. US dollars, converted at the time of extraction and rounded to three significant figures.
6. News columns. The excerpt is the earliest reporting sentence that does not name a data provider. Source and URL come from that article when it can be retrieved.
7. Not a completed round. Rounds whose every report describes talks or plans ("in talks to raise", "seeking", "plans to commit") are dropped, and undisclosed-stage, debt or strategic rounds that read as project or asset finance (solar and wind projects, MW capacity, tax equity, financing packages) are dropped.
8. Location check. Companies whose rounds mostly name cities that are almost never in the United Kingdom across the global table (under 5% of 10 or more rounds) are dropped: their website was matched to a same-named foreign company, or the company only has a holding entity here.
9. Back-fill days. Two days on which archives of older articles were loaded with the load date instead of the publication date (2024-04-22 and 2025-02-13) are excluded.

10. Nation. From the company's record in the company register; when it has none, the most common nation of companies in the same city in this data.

11. Sample. Each company key is ranked by sha1(key). Keys are taken in rank order until the file holds max(25%, 5,000) rows (capped at 100,000).

12. Profile links. Links are built from Fliar's company index and checked against it. A row whose company has no public profile has an empty link.

Limitations

• Derived from news: rounds that were never reported are missing, and coverage is stronger for larger and English-reported deals.
• Amounts are as reported; fixed-rate conversion to US dollars makes local-currency rounds drift slightly over time.
• Stage labels mean different things in different markets.
• 2026 covers January to June only.
• Sector labels come from a company classifier, so some companies are mislabelled.
• news_source and news_url are blank when the article could not be retrieved at release time (about 40% of rows).

Cite this dataset

@misc{fliarbi_uk_startup_funding_2019_2026_2026,
  author    = {{Fliar BI}},
  title     = {{UK Startup Funding Data 2019-2026: 6.7k Rounds}},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Fliar BI},
  url       = {https://fliarbi.com/datasets/uk-startup-funding-2019-2026/},
  note      = {Sample release. Licence CC BY-NC 4.0}
}