Starting a company in the UK is quick and cheap. Keeping one alive is much harder, and the money that does reach startups goes to a small number of sectors and postcodes.

The 20 facts below come from the latest data published by Companies House, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the Department for Business and Trade and the venture trackers Dealroom and Beauhurst.

These are the latest figures available in October 2026. Official business statistics are published a year or more after the period they measure, so some of the facts below describe 2024 or 2025.

How many new businesses start in the UK each year?

Companies House registered 815,277 new companies in the year to 31 March 2026, the most recent full year of data. That is roughly 2,230 new companies every day.

1. More than 815,000 companies were set up in 12 months

Incorporations in the financial year ending March 2026 rose by 1.67% on the previous year, according to the Companies House register activities release. The rise came in a year when forming a company got harder: identity verification for directors became a legal requirement on 18 November 2025, and incorporation fees went up on 1 February 2026. If you are setting one up for the first time, read our guide to registering your first UK tech company before you file.

2. Almost as many companies closed as opened

Companies House dissolved 787,120 companies in the same year, up 8.31%. For every 100 companies registered, about 97 were struck off. The total register grew by only 51,258 companies to 5,479,045. Founders often quote the incorporation figure as proof of a booming startup scene, but the net growth is less than a tenth of it.

3. The UK has 5.7 million businesses, and three in four employ nobody

The Department for Business and Trade counted 5.69 million private sector businesses at the start of 2025, up 191,000 (3.5%) in a year. About 4.27 million of them, or 75%, have no employees other than the owner. Only around 8,300 businesses employ 250 people or more. The population is still below its 2020 level of almost 6 million. The 2026 figures are due on 5 November 2026.

4. The average company is dissolved before its fifth birthday

The average age of a UK company at dissolution was 4.93 years in the year to March 2026, and it has stayed close to five years since 2017. The register is young as a result: 45% of all companies on it are under five years old.

How many tech companies are there in the UK?

The UK has 107,082 digital and technology companies, according to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). That is 5.2% of all UK companies, or roughly one in 20. DSIT published this count in June 2026 using a new company-by-company definition, which replaces older estimates built on industry codes. Figures of 300,000 or more that still circulate online use those older, broader methods and are not comparable.

5. One company in 20 is a tech company, but tech produces £408 billion of turnover

The 107,082 tech companies generated an estimated £408 billion in turnover in 2024, 8.2% of the UK total from companies, and employed 1.33 million people, according to DSIT's economic statistics for the sector. Large firms do most of the work: companies with 250 or more staff provide 54% of tech jobs and 59% of tech turnover, even though 95.4% of tech companies are small.

6. A tech job pays about £19,000 more than the UK median

The average wage in the sector was £56,000 in 2024, 49.6% above the UK median of £37,000. Each tech employee produced £119,000 of gross value added, against a UK average of £78,000. For founders this cuts both ways: tech businesses create valuable jobs, and they compete for staff at salaries most early-stage startups struggle to match.

7. Only 10% of tech companies work in "frontier" technology, yet they take 77% of the tech investment

DSIT counts 10,972 companies in six frontier areas: artificial intelligence, cyber security, quantum, semiconductors, engineering biology and advanced connectivity. In 2025 they raised £6.4 billion of the £8.3 billion in equity that went to private UK tech companies, according to DSIT's financial statistics. Their average deal was £8.6 million, against £6.4 million across tech as a whole.

How many UK startups fail?

About six in ten UK businesses close within five years. The Office for National Statistics found that only 38.4% of businesses born in 2019 were still trading in 2024. The often-repeated claim that "90% of startups fail" has no UK official source behind it.

8. Only 38.4% of new businesses reach their fifth year

The five-year survival rate comes from the ONS Business demography, UK: 2024 bulletin, which tracks VAT and PAYE registered businesses. Location matters: the South West had the best five-year survival rate at 43.5%, and the West Midlands the worst at 30.6%. In 2024 the UK recorded 317,440 business births and 280,375 deaths, giving a death rate of 9.8%, the lowest since 2016.

9. Fewer than 3 in 100 company closures are insolvencies

Companies House dissolved 787,120 companies in the year to March 2026, but recorded only 23,488 insolvent liquidations. Most dissolved companies are struck off voluntarily or for failing to file: dormant companies, side projects that never traded, owners who retire. A dissolution count is a measure of churn, not of businesses going bust owing money.

10. A funded startup is more likely to stall than to fail

Beauhurst followed 2,582 high-growth UK companies that were at seed stage in 2017. Five years later, 54% had stagnated at seed stage, 20% had failed, 23% had grown to a later stage and 2% had been sold or listed. Money separated the groups: companies that failed had raised £289,000 on average, against £8.53 million for those that scaled. Failed companies lasted 2.94 years on average. The study covers a pre-pandemic cohort, so treat the exact shares as a guide.

11. Transport and storage is the riskiest sector to start in

Transport and storage had the UK's highest business birth rate for the seventh year running in 2024, at 15.6%, and the highest death rate, at 16.5%. It also has the lowest five-year survival rate of any industry. In Wales, only 14.8% of transport and storage businesses survive five years. Health had one of the lowest death rates, at 6.5%.

Which sectors get the most startup funding?

Artificial intelligence gets the most. AI companies raised a record £7.70 billion of equity in 2025, 32% of all the money invested in UK private companies, according to Beauhurst. The next biggest sector, manufacturing, raised about half that.

12. UK companies raised about £24 billion, from fewer and larger deals

Equity investment into UK companies rose 3.34% in 2025 to roughly £24 billion, while the number of deals fell 7.87% to 5,887, according to The Deal 2026 from Beauhurst and Mercia Ventures. The pace held in 2026: Barclays and Beauhurst put the first-half total at £14.4 billion, as reported by Business Matters. Foreign money writes the big cheques. DSIT found that UK tech deals with only British investors averaged £2.4 million in 2025, against £24.4 million when foreign investors took part.

13. AI took almost a third of all UK equity investment

AI's £7.70 billion in 2025 came from nearly one in five of all deals, according to Beauhurst's sector analysis. AI was one of only 15 industries to record both more deals and higher average deal values than its three-year average.

14. Manufacturing out-raised fintech, and health investment went backwards

Manufacturing companies raised £3.98 billion in 2025, more than fintech (£3.16 billion) or pharmaceuticals (£2.26 billion). Deal numbers in robots and automation ran 44% above their three-year average. Pharmaceuticals, life sciences, biotech, medical devices and clinical diagnostics all recorded fewer deals and smaller average rounds than their three-year averages, as the funding wave of the pandemic years unwound. For founders outside software, the signal is that investors are backing industrial and hardware companies again.

15. A single first round made up 39% of the market

Ineffable Intelligence, an AI company founded in late 2025 by David Silver, a UCL professor who previously worked at Google DeepMind, raised £814 million in its first round in the first half of 2026. That one deal was 39% of all first-time equity raised in the UK in those six months. Deals like this distort the averages: the average first-time deal was £1.7 million, but the median was £290,000. That median is the realistic benchmark when you are building a startup pitch deck for a first raise. In 2025, 2,730 startups raised a first round between them worth £4.4 billion, according to the State of UK First-Time Investment 2026 report from Beauhurst and Penningtons Manches Cooper.

How many unicorns does the UK have?

The UK has between 80 and 205 unicorns, depending on whose definition you use. Every major tracker puts the UK first in Europe and third in the world, behind the United States and China.

16. The two best-known unicorn counts are 125 companies apart

Dealroom counted 205 UK unicorn-tier companies in August 2026, while the Hurun UK Unicorns 2026 index counted 80 on 1 July 2026. Hurun only includes companies founded since 2000 that are still private. Dealroom also counts companies that have listed or been sold at $1 billion or more. Idea London sets the two side by side. When you quote a UK unicorn figure, name the source and its date, or the number means little.

17. Fintech is a third of UK unicorns and over half their value

On Hurun's count, 27 of the 80 unicorns are fintech companies, worth £121.8 billion between them, or 53% of the total value of £242.4 billion. Revolut alone was valued at $75 billion after a share sale in November 2025. AI is catching up fast: Hurun lists 12 pure AI unicorns worth £40.6 billion, more than four times their value a year earlier. Hurun counted 23 new UK unicorns in 2026, the largest group it has recorded.

18. A UK startup can now become a unicorn before its second birthday

Ineffable Intelligence was founded in 2025 and valued at $5.1 billion after a $1.1 billion seed round in April 2026. Robotics firm Humanoid and materials company CuspAI were both founded in 2024 and passed $1 billion in July 2026, according to Tracxn data reported by BusinessCloud. Skyscanner, by comparison, took 13 years to reach $1 billion. Valuations also fall: Checkout.com was valued at $40 billion in 2022 and $12 billion in 2025, a drop of about 70%.

Where are UK startups, and who starts them?

London still dominates the top of the market, but most first funding rounds now happen elsewhere. The founders of the biggest UK startups are mostly university-educated, often born abroad and rarely women.

19. Most first funding rounds now happen outside London

London's share of first-time equity deals fell to 49.1% in 2025 and 44.6% in the first half of 2026, according to Beauhurst and Penningtons Manches Cooper. First-time fundraising in the West Midlands nearly doubled in 2025, and rose 73% in Northern Ireland and 60% in Scotland. The capital still leads on AI, with 392 AI first rounds against 268 in the rest of the UK. London holds 60 of Hurun's 80 unicorns and had the UK's highest business birth rate in 2024, at 12.7%, according to the ONS. For founders building in AI anywhere in the country, our list of early-stage AI accelerators in the UK covers both equity-based and equity-free programmes.

20. Over half of UK unicorns were founded by people born abroad, and 6% of founders are women

Hurun studied 136 founders of UK unicorns. More than half of the companies were founded by people born outside the UK, 90% of the founders went to university and 27% attended Oxford or Cambridge. Only 8 of the 136 founders are women. The average founder was 35 when they started the company, and the youngest, ElevenLabs co-founders Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, are 29. ElevenLabs itself reached an $11 billion valuation in its Series D round in February 2026.

What these numbers mean if you are starting a company

Headline figures overstate both the boom and the bust. The 815,000 incorporations include dormant companies and side projects, and most of the 787,000 dissolutions are voluntary strike-offs rather than insolvencies. When a figure sounds dramatic, such as "90% of startups fail" or "300,000 UK tech companies", check who produced it, what it counts and which year it covers.

Plan a first raise around the median, not the average. The median first round was £290,000, while the average was dragged to £1.7 million by a handful of AI megadeals. Rounds with only UK investors averaged £2.4 million in tech, a tenth of the size of rounds with foreign investors involved, so founders aiming for large rounds usually need overseas money at some point.

For a funded startup, stalling is a bigger risk than collapse. In Beauhurst's cohort, more companies stayed stuck at seed stage for five years (54%) than failed (20%), and the companies that failed did so after about three years. Setting milestones that move the business to the next stage inside that window matters as much as raising the money.

"After speaking with many founders over the years, I have found that first-time founders often obsess over product-market fit while overlooking founder-market fit. A founder who deeply understands the problem, the customer and the market starts with a significant advantage. You still need a great product and strong execution, but when the founder and the market are naturally aligned, the path to product-market fit can become considerably easier."

Vijay Rathee, Co-Founder, Growthcart

If you are weighing up your own starting point, our guide to founder-market fit and why investors care about it explains how to assess it.

Two dates are worth watching. The Department for Business and Trade publishes its 2026 business population figures on 5 November 2026. Companies House has said its June 2026 release was the last in its current format, so year-on-year comparisons may change once the new statistics arrive.

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