Four Scottish companies - Amphista Therapeutics in Motherwell; Roslin Technologies in Edinburgh; Interactive Investor in Glasgow; and NuCana BioMed in Edinburgh - are identified as Futurecorns, fast-growing companies set to achieve a $1bn valuation, according to analysis by Dealroom.co and the Digital Economy Council.

Scotland’s futurecorns are part of the huge expansion of the UK tech sector, which has grown 10 fold in the last 10 years, enabling the creation of hundreds of fast growing tech companies across the country, including in Scotland.

Since 2010, the UK has experienced a sustained increase in the venture capital flowing into the tech sector, which has resulted in a huge expansion in the number of startups that are scaling rapidly in sectors as diverse as fintech, food delivery, e-commerce and healthtech.

Scottish startups last year attracted £345m in venture capital investment, despite the pandemic and a recent report recognised that 13,000 digital tech job opportunities were created every year in Scotland.

Over the course of 10 years, the number of unicorns - private tech companies valued at $1bn or more - has increased from 8 in 2010 to 81 in 2020. Unicorns from 2010 including Betfair, Admiral Group and Ocado are now household names. Scotland has produced three unicorn companies: BrewDog, FanDuel and Skyscanner.

Meanwhile the number of futurecorns has accelerated from 10 to 126 in 2020. Over the same period, venture capital investment into the UK has increased from £1.2bn in 2010 to £11.3bn 10 years later.

These numbers demonstrate the extent to which the UK is catching up with the US and China in tech, with London now fourth behind the Bay Area, Beijing and New York, when it comes to the number of startups and unicorns created. No other European country has been able to grow at such a speed.

In Scotland, there are four of these fast-growing futurecorns. These are Amphista Therapeutics in Motherwell, a biopharmaceutical company creating therapeutics that harness the body’s natural processes to remove disease-causing proteins; Roslin Technologies in Edinburgh which is developing pioneering innovations to make the agriculture and animal health sectors more sustainable; Interactive Investor, the online investment platform based in Glasgow; and NuCana BioMed, the pharmaceutical company developing medicines that address significant unmet medical needs based in Edinburgh. Together, these businesses employ over 500 people.

Tech companies across the UK raised a collective £11.3bn in funding last year - with Scottish tech companies raising £345m - 10x the investment raised in 2010 at £1.2bn.

That’s more than every other country except China and the United States, and 250% more than the EU’s largest economy, Germany. Since 2015, total UK venture capital investment has been higher in every year than that in France, Germany and Israel. Overseas investors from the US and Asia have been increasingly attracted to the UK’s fastest-growing companies.

Whilst venture capital investment used to be concentrated at early stages, with 64% of funding going to companies at Seed, Series A and B rounds in 2016, for the past two years more than half of VC investment has been at later stages. This is helping to build the UK’s next generation of tech stars, contributing significantly to the maturity of the UK tech sector and the increasing number of potential unicorns across the country.

Nicola Thompson, CEO of Amphista Therapeutics, said: “It’s brilliant to be recognised as one of the UK’s leading futurecorns. At Amphista we’re building a world-leading biopharmaceutical company, based on groundbreaking research from the University of Dundee, and situated in BioCity Scotland. We’re dedicated to delivering innovative new medicines in areas of high patient need, including cancer and CNS, and this is all possible thanks to our outstanding team and support of our great investors.”

Stephen Kelly, chair of Tech Nation, added: “The rate of growth in the UK tech ecosystem in the last 10 years has been immense and we are confident that there is more to come. The UK now has an incredible 132 futurecorns, more than France and Germany combined which demonstrates the extent to which the UK is leading Europe. Tech Nation will continue to work closely with entrepreneurs and the Government to give us the best chance of building truly dynamic and sustainable tech businesses.”