UK tech sector beats China for VC investment with £12.4bn so far in 2022

A digital depiction of London's financial district
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

The UK's technology sector has raised $16 billion (£12.4bn) of venture capital funding so far in 2022, already more than the whole of 2020 (£12bn).

Globally it puts the UK ahead of China which has only seen $12.9 billion (£10.5bn) since the start of the year, according to figures from Dealroom released ahead of London Tech Week.

The United States still dominates when it comes to technology investment, with $124 billion (£101.3bn) raised in the first five months of the year. However, the UK has enjoyed record-breaking funding pulling in £9 billion in just the first quarter (up from £6.3bn in the same period of 2021), ahead of both India and China and more than double what was raised by the nearest European country, France.

London continues to be the most lucrative location for tech investment with £8.6 billion going to the UK's capital alone. That's more than double raised in Paris (£3.9bn) and over four times more than Berlin (£1.9bn). Fintech was also the country's strongest sector, investment-wise, with £6.2 billion raised by startups.

The US appears to be a keen investor in the UK's tech scene, with an increase in funding in 2022. A total of £6.1 billion has come from America, which is already more than what came from the country in the whole of 2020. Asian investment has also climbed with £2.3 billion coming from various sources across the continent.

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"Despite the wider global challenges that have led to a slow down in public markets, private tech investment in the UK is continuing to grow," Yoram Wijngaarde, founder and CEO at Dealroom, said.

"The UK has cemented its reputation as one of the best places to invest in fintech, with more fintech investment going into the country in the first part of this year compared to even the Bay Area. Nearly everything will be affected by the downturn we've entered into, but overall the UK tech sector is in a strong position than it's ever been before in terms of breadth and depth of the entire ecosystem."

Bobby Hellard

Bobby Hellard is ITPro's Reviews Editor and has worked on CloudPro and ChannelPro since 2018. In his time at ITPro, Bobby has covered stories for all the major technology companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook, and regularly attends industry-leading events such as AWS Re:Invent and Google Cloud Next.

Bobby mainly covers hardware reviews, but you will also recognize him as the face of many of our video reviews of laptops and smartphones.