Tech Nation selects 13 companies for latest Future Fifty cohort
Tech Nation has selected 13 late-stage companies for its Future Fifty programme, which offers founders guidance to help scale up their businesses.
The companies include open banking platform Yapily, payments company Zilch and car finance tech provider Zuto.
Over the next six months, the tech companies will work within Future Fifty to grow their businesses, utilising peer-to-peer learning opportunities, in-depth masterclass sessions, access to a dedicated Tech Nation visa team and sessions with key government officials.
This year the programme, supported by HSBC UK and Slaughter and May as partners, has the most regionally diverse cohort, with nearly half of companies coming from outside of London. The 13 businesses operate in 19 countries and have raised a total of $2.2bn (£1.9bn) in venture capital investment.
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This the Future Fifty’s 11th year. Since it was launched, the programme has supported 30 of the 138 tech unicorns founded in the UK, which have raised £16.3bn in total. These include Revolut, Skyscanner, Monzo and Deliveroo.
The companies are selected by a panel of judges, which this year included James Meekings, co-founder of Funding Circle.
“Congratulations to the latest Future Fifty companies! It’s been a privilege to work with Tech Nation to support the UK’s late-stage tech firms,” said Meekings. “The Future Fifty 11.0 cohort shows yet again how vibrant and truly disruptive the UK’s tech sector is. Tech Nation has been phenomenal at fuelling the growth of the most ambitious UK founders, teams and businesses, as the UK continues to be a global tech leader.”
Since the start of Future Fifty, UK’s tech ecosystem has seen significant growth. So far this year, late-stage tech companies have raised $18.7bn, more than eight times the amount they raised in 2012. Over the last year, they have raised 50 rounds that were worth more than $100m. 10 years ago, there were just two such rounds.
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