FT Investigation Data Workbench Ref: @FT Status #2096557672111759436

UK Idea Factory: Innovation & Scale-Up Leakage Tracker

"Britain is a factory for ideas applied elsewhere." Explore the historical migration of British foundational breakthroughs from UK discovery through commercial scale-up, foreign takeover, and overseas market value capture.

Modeled Landmark Value
$3,840B
Combined enterprise cap of tracked breakthrough tech
UK Retained Value
$485B (12.6%)
Domestic equity & listed enterprise retention
Overseas Value Leakage
$3,355B (87.4%)
Captured by US, Japan, EU & Asian conglomerates
Simulated Policy Gain
+$0B
Additional retention under active domestic levers

Foundational Technology Lifecycle Flow

Scale-Up Retention Policy Simulator

Adjust domestic policy interventions to model counterfactual retention across deep-tech, university spinouts, and capital gates:

Pension Tech Mandate 15%
Mansion House pact: allocate UK pension assets into domestic deep-tech Series B-D.
Gov/NHS Procurement 25%
Mandate domestic sovereign anchor purchases for AI, diagnostics & energy.
Spinout Equity Friction Cap 10%
University founder equity ceiling to keep seed rounds investable for scale.
Active scenario projection: Retains an estimated +$240B in high-growth enterprise equity domestic capacity.

ARM Architecture

Leakage: SoftBank & US IPO
Origin: Cambridge (Acorn) Acquirer: SoftBank / Nasdaq
Pioneered reduced instruction set computing (RISC) in Cambridge. Scaled through UK listing but was acquired in 2016 for £24.3B by Japan's SoftBank, followed by a 2023 primary listing on New York's Nasdaq rather than the London Stock Exchange.
Enterprise Value Split
15%
85% Foreign
Key Bottleneck & Milestone Path
Structural Leakage Gate:

Late-stage sovereign public market liquidity gap forced dual-currency overseas listing & private equity takeover.