Andrew Williamson, managing partner of Cambridge Innovation Capital, talks to PMP about growing the UK’s preeminent science and technology innovation ecosystem and creating commercial opportunities.
The UK can justly claim to produce world-class science and technology – but the path to commercialisation has not always been smooth. The prospects for the country’s future growth now rest heavily on converting the academic research emanating from the ‘Golden Triangle’ – Cambridge, Oxford and London – into economic opportunities.
Cambridge was ranked the top science and technology cluster by intensity for the third successive year, in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index 2024, beating Silicon Valley into a close second. The University of Cambridge reports it contributes nearly £30 billion to the UK economy annually, including over £23 billion from commercialisation and innovation activities. It commissioned a report last year that estimated the combined value of its tech ecosystem at $191 billion (£147 billion).
Andrew Williamson is at the centre of this activity. The managing partner of Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC) recently co-chaired the UK government’s independent review of university spin-out companies and chaired the BVCA’s venture capital committee. After completing his PhD in Cambridge, Williamson studied at Berkeley and spent his career in the US, mostly in Silicon Valley, before returning to take his first job in the UK. CIC occupies a unique place within the ecosystem, with a propriety agreement with the University of Cambridge.
The Cambridge ecosystem has two core strengths for potential commercialisation. The first pillar is deep tech, including the areas of artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum computing and robotics. The second is life sciences, which includes the development of therapeutic drugs, gene therapies, diagnostics and medical devices. “Cambridge is the best place in Europe for all these sectors,” says Williamson. “It provides a rich vein of investment opportunities.”
Commercialising science
The Cambridge ecosystem inevitably draws comparison to how Silicon Valley grew up around Stanford University, gaining momentum over the 1970s and 1980s. “The US has lent into technology-enabled economic growth since the Second World War,” says Williamson. “There’s been more of a culture of early-stage start-ups in the US – we’re about 20 years behind.”
The UK started commercialising science later with an identifiable Golden Triangle emerging around 2000. Williamson says this has produced a clear change in mindset among recent generations of graduates.
“As a student in the 1990s, there was limited amount of commercialisation activity in the UK, and people maybe even saw it as tainting the purity of fundamental science. Now all the best graduates of the current generation want to work in our startups and spin-ups. Those are the coolest jobs and regarded as ‘the thing to do’,” he says.
He adds the “vast majority” of academics under 50 want to see the impact of their research achieved through commercialisation. Beyond writing academic papers and presenting at conferences, this means seeing real-life products cure diseases, accelerate computing or address climate change.
Says Williamson: “There are so many possibilities from science, but you must commercialise and do it at scale to have an impact. The UK has now fully bought into that, and obviously it aligns perfectly with the national agenda around technology-enabled economic growth and the ‘science superpower’ agenda.”
While former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s earlier Silicon Valley career aligned his outlook with the sector, the impetus has transferred intact to the new Labour government. “Almost completely,” says Williamson. “It’s very interesting. At the end of January, there were big announcements from [chancellor] Rachel Reeves about doubling the growth rate and size of the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor, the Silicon Valley of Europe.”
Science minister Patrick Valance has been appointed as the Oxford-Cambridge Innovation Champion to support new investment into research parks and transportation. “It really sets the table for us to then turbocharge growth on top of that infrastructure. There’s no daylight between the new government and the last one for this growth agenda. We have a pretty supportive fiscal environment compared to the US,” he says.
There are so many possibilities from science, but you must commercialise and do it at scale to have an impact.
Andrew Williamson, Cambridge Innovation Capital
The British Business Bank (BBB) has also been “very supportive” in supporting early-stage companies, says Williamson. British Patient Capital, part of the BBB, anchored CIC’s £100 million scale-up Opportunities Fund alongside Aviva Investors in February 2025.
Christine Hockley, managing director of funds at British Patient Capital, said in a statement: “Cambridge has long been a global research centre, but it is now a growing hub for breakthrough technology as its spin-out ecosystem matures. CIC has unparalleled access to the opportunities emerging from that ecosystem and is providing critical growth funding that can help these businesses to reach their commercial potential, ultimately allowing British entrepreneurs to build successful, globally competitive companies.”
The government is also maintaining its support for the startup sector through the tax system. The Enterprise Investment Scheme provides tax credits for very early-stage investments, while R&D tax credits support or subsidise the activities of early-stage companies. “There’s a number of ways in which there’s actually pretty significant economic support that you don’t see in North America,” says Williamson.
Overcoming headwinds
The UK government’s ability to support innovation could be held back fiscal constraints while energy-intensive sectors such as AI processing need to overcome internationally high energy prices.
“The UK is probably not best placed to compete head-on to build the largest, most energy-intensive data centres needed for large language models such as ChatGPT,” he says. “But we can compete on the next generation of smart maths and computer science, which makes the data centres more energy efficient and the AI algorithms more accurate. We’re seeing great investment opportunities in that space. AI is a huge driver.”
“The innovation we’re investing in is the next generation AI, which is more energy efficient. AI is about very smart mathematics and computer science, which we have in spades in the Golden Triangle,” he says, noting that Nobel Prizes for physics and chemistry went to alumni of Cambridge University for AI applications last year.
Establishing a science and technology ecosystem would be a crown jewel of any economy – so establishing it is subject of intense international competition. “The biggest constraint is human capital, or talent,” says Williamson. “There is a massive fight to recruit the best and brightest STEM graduates, the most ambitious scientists and engineers across maths, computer science, physics and chemistry.”
We have a very stable university sector, with public funding of fundamental research. If there’s a moment in time where we can steal a march, we should.
Andrew Williamson, Cambridge Innovation Capital
The UK has three of the top 10 universities in the world according to The Times rankings: Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial. “We get lots of great IP that we can build into companies and great innovations. We are also very fortunate to have a massive talent base that’s increasingly entrepreneurial and wants to be working on cool stuff.
“We are leading Europe, but we need to invest in the infrastructure that facilitates the ability to scale up, so the talent doesn’t move to the US as businesses expand. That’s a constant challenge that we must focus on.”
American tech firms have long utilised H-1B visas to attract the best global talent, but domestic political pressure may result in them being restricted; this could potentially be a boon for the UK ecosystem.
“I went to America on an H-1B visa in the 1990s, like many people, but they are tightening restrictions. Everyone’s pulling their hair out. All kinds of things are being cut in the current turmoil of the US funding ecosystem,” says Williamson.
“But the bigger factor for us is that we have a very stable university sector, with public funding of fundamental research. If there’s a moment in time where we can steal a march, we should.”
The UK ecosystem is also being supported by its re-entry to the European academic funding programme Horizon at the start of 2024, after a period of absence due to the Brexit deal. “It took a long time to sort out Horizon post-Brexit,” says Williamson. “But the UK is fully back in – we’re a fully-active member. There was a disruption for five or six years, but we’re through it.”
Williamson spoke to PMP at the PLSA conference in March, between meetings with pension schemes. “Our investor base has grown and diversified. We now have a very international base of institutional investors including sovereign wealth funds and corporations. We’re starting to see more pension funds investing, particularly in the scale-up end of our business. There’s growing interest in our sector.”
He says the Mansion House Compact is critical in facilitating investment in high-growth companies. As almost all DB schemes mature and derisk towards buyouts, a new wave of money is coming from DC schemes such as master trusts that will be continuing to build assets for many years.
“DC is definitely where most of the attention is coming from. The pool of capital has been growing very rapidly in the workplace pensions that have been set up over the last decade,” says Williamson.
“There is definitely a place for a mix of productive assets in a pension pool. I’m delighted to see that from the perspective of pensioners – but also because it unleashes more capital for growth investments in the UK economy, which is good for everyone. It’s a genuine win-win.”