The Royal Academy of Engineering has published the sixth edition of its annual Spotlight on Spinouts report, providing a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of how UK universities are commercialising research into spinouts. The report finds that the UK remains the leading country in Europe in absolute value terms, outperforming major European economies such as Germany and France, and that university spinouts have nearly tripled in value to £49 billion since 2020.
Oxford ranked first in Europe
The UK hosts five of the top ten European universities for spinout value creation, with the University of Oxford ranked first in Europe, alongside the University of Cambridge, University College London, the University of Bristol and Imperial College London.
Oxford’s strength was underlined further in 2025, when two of Europe’s six one billion dollar plus spinout exits came from the university. OrganOx, a medical device company, was acquired for around 1.5 billion dollars, and Oxford Ionics, a quantum technology company, sold for around 1.1 billion dollars. These exits offer clear evidence that the UK spinout landscape is maturing and can scale to globally competitive outcomes, not just early stage innovation.
An accelerating pace of growth
Since 2010, some 2,000 spinout companies have been created in the UK, generating 27,000 jobs, 70 per cent of them since 2020. The combined enterprise value of these companies has grown 2.8-fold since 2020, driven by a wave of post-2015 companies reaching commercial maturity, strong progression to later funding stages, and sustained investment in high value deep tech sectors such as life sciences, AI and quantum.
“Deep tech now defines the UK spinout landscape, accounting for 96 per cent of total value and underpinning much of the country’s innovation strength. We are also seeing clear signs of a more mature and geographically diverse ecosystem, with activity extending well beyond the Golden Triangle.”
— Dr Caroline Hargrove CBE FREng, Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Committee Chair
Founder equity under the spotlight
In the first analysis of its kind, the report found that founder equity in UK spinouts is typically unequal and highly variable, with 63 per cent of successful spinouts having unequal founder equity splits. Average university equity stakes have fallen to around 16 per cent, the lowest level recorded in the past decade, down from 22 to 25 per cent in the period leading up to the 2023 reforms.
“We are home to some of the world’s best universities and brightest scientific minds, and the companies emerging from our higher education sector are delivering the growth which creates new jobs, greater investment, and more opportunity.”
— Lord Vallance KCB FRS FMedSci FRCP HonFREng, Minister for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear
Looking ahead
With Oxford ranked first in Europe for spinout value creation and two of the continent’s largest exits of 2025 originating here, the report is a strong marker of the depth and maturity of Oxfordshire’s research commercialisation pipeline. As reforms to founder and university equity continue to bed in, and as investment in deep tech sectors accelerates, Oxfordshire’s universities and spinouts look well placed to continue leading this growth.
Read the full Spotlight on Spinouts 2026 report from the Royal Academy of Engineering here: https://raeng.org.uk/media/0kybrz3v/01_spotlight_report_final_-for-publication.pdf
