INSIGHTS / News

Image above shows the team from University of Bath spin-out Naturbeads

Spin-outs emerging from the SETsquared Partnership universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey raised an impressive £273m of investment in 2024, double the equivalent raised the previous year and representing over 10% of the total estimated investment raised by all UK spin-out companies.

This significant funding was secured by 43 spin-out companies, all of which are transforming pioneering university research into market-ready products and services which have the potential to shape our future economy.

With a natural alignment to high growth sectors and built on critical technologies, ventures created from commercialising research have the potential to make an impact on a global scale. With the majority of these businesses remaining in the SETsquared university regions, this surge in investment demonstrates clear potential to drive sustained impact within the South Central and South West regional economies.

Beyond boosting economic prospects, these companies have the potential to address critical global challenges such as climate change and chronic health conditions. Among this year’s rising stars, the health and life sciences sectors attracted the most significant investments, with cleantech solutions and semiconductor technologies also gaining strong investor interest.

Marty Reid, Executive Director, SETsquared, says: “It’s an exciting time for UK spin-outs. With market and government interest in them at an all-time high, spin-outs are being recognised as essential engines of innovation, growth, and economic prosperity. The scale and quality of science and technology companies emerging from across the SETsquared University clusters is a match for any ecosystem. It reflects years of significant investment in translational research and the strong entrepreneurial support ecosystem across our partnership.

Excitingly, half of the spin-outs raised investment at seed stage, so there are still significant growth opportunities within this cohort and we are seeing a real wave of new scientific entrepreneurial talent emerging all the time”.

Spin-outs that have raised investment in 2024 include:

• Naturbeads (University of Bath): Developed natural and biodegradable microspheres made from cellulose to replace polluting microplastics. Raised £7.8m in 2024.
• Forefront RF (University of Bristol): A fabless semiconductor company poised to simplify mobile radio front-end designs in smartphones, wearables and other IoT devices with a breakthrough tuneable duplexer. Raised £16m in 2024.
• nisien.ai (Cardiff University): Uses scientifically informed cutting-edge technology to detect and respond to online harms, such as online conflict, to support healthy debate and conversations. Raised £790k in 2024.
• Senisca (University of Exeter): Developing a new generation of senotherapeutic interventions to treat age-related disease. Raised £3.7m in 2024.
• Curve Therapeutics (University of Southampton): Utilises a proprietary cell-based Microcycle® discovery platform to build a pipeline of innovative drugs with a focus on cancer, immunology and inflammation. Raised £40.5m in 2024.
• Silveray (University of Surrey) An efficient semi-disposable Digital X-ray Film (DXF) for the X-ray imaging market which revolutionises affordable large-area direct conversion detectors. Raised £4m in 2024.

Paving the way for spin-out growth

Transforming world-class research into scalable businesses presents unique challenges due to the nature of working with ground-breaking science and technology. Ensuring access to essential services, infrastructure, and patient capital is critical to launching and scaling these ventures. The SETsquared Partnership has been collaborating on major initiatives, which should mean last year’s impressive figures are only the beginning.

SETsquared’s partnership with deep tech investor Qantx to establish a £300 million spin-out investment vehicle marks a significant step forward. This fund will offer early-stage patient capital, expertise, and support to university spin-outs and regional startups in areas of global impact, including sustainability, clean energy, and transformative healthcare.

Our universities are also collaborating with investors, industry and law firms to transform research commercialisation through the £2.3M Research England backed IMPACT-IP programme, which is developing a Deal Readiness Toolkit—a comprehensive suite of standardised playbooks, legal templates, and resources, hugely reducing the time and effort required to invest in spin-out companies.

The newly launched SpinOutWest programme is focused on developing new spin-out activity in health and social care by uniting higher education institutions, the NHS, and private equity firms. This initiative is taking a collaborative regional approach to identify promising research and integrate spin-out expertise across more diverse pipelines of talent.

By bridging funding gaps, addressing barriers to growth and continuing to collaborate across the innovation ecosystem, these initiatives should inspire and support a new generation of talent to bring technologies out of the lab and into the industries of tomorrow.