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The UK had Amstrad, Sinclair, Acorn (which sortof became Arm) What have we got now? When I look up the UKs biggest tech companies now its people like Aveva and

The UK had Amstrad, Sinclair, Acorn (which sortof became Arm) What have we got now? When I look up the UKs biggest tech companies now its people like Aveva and Sage who make dull enterprisey software. Is there anyone else? edit: I guess we might still have some big game studios? edit: I'll also take websites, has the UK got any big website companies? Seems like our biggest are Rightmove and Autotrader

agd 4y ago
There are lots of tech companies (e.g. Fintech, games etc) however not much hard tech. Like the rest of Europe, we're completely reliant on the US/Asia for cutting edge chips and phones.
- didntreadarticl 4y ago
  tell me about the big fintech and games ones
  - michaelt 4y ago
    If you look at, for example, the UK entries in [1] you'll find many of them are doing loans, payments, insurance and blockchain stuff. (Admittedly, that list is using a definition of 'startup' broad enough to include the UK's second-largest energy supply company) [1] https://sifted.eu/rankings/european-unicorn-startups https://sifted.eu/rankings/european-unicorn-startups
RobotToaster 4y ago
ARM I guess?
- didntreadarticl 4y ago
  Still in Cambridge but owned by Japans SoftBank Group. Does that count? When I look up 'UKs biggest tech companies' ARM doesnt get a mention.
chrisjc 4y ago
I've probably posted it several times now, but there's a great acquired podcast about ARM. https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/arm-softbank https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/arm-softbank
mark_undoio 4y ago
I don't think there are many big UK computer companies that haven't been absorbed by something else. There was Microfocus: https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/home https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/home They owned SuSE at one time. But MicroFocus now have owners outside the UK. And there was Autonomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Autonomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Autonomy Bought by HP, leading to lots of controversy and legal wrangling when they did get what they had expected.
- masfuerte 4y ago
  Many Autonomy people went to Darktrace. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darktrace https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darktrace
- stevekemp 4y ago
  Microfocus is a name I've not heard in a good few years - the last time I heard of them was for their COBOL compilers, on SCO Unixware.
  - mark_undoio 4y ago
    They're still making COBOL compilers, as far as I know - targeting Linux and with some modern style Dev tools too. I guess it's a migration path for people getting rid of big iron but unable or uninterested in getting rid of the code they ran.
rowanajmarshall 4y ago
> I guess we might still have some big game studios? We've got Creative Assembly (owned by Japan-based Sega), Rockstar North (previously DMA Design and founded the GTA series, now owned by US-based Rockstar ofc), Jagex (owned by a US PE company), and a whole host of others mostly now owned by US companies. There's a piece of wisdom floating around that the UK is actually really good at building tech and tech-adjacent companies, bu really bad at scaling them beyond a certain point. We don't have the BigTech companies China and the US do (nobody does, really), but we're a pretty open economy that American firms are comfortable doing business with, so lots of promising companies get acquired before they hit _big_.
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  Yes there's a lot of firms that are actually in some senses UK companies from a tech perspective, but are owned by Americans. I used to work for one. All the engineering work was done out of the UK. The US focused on sales. Funnily enough, when we started working together I was getting drinks with the CEO and I mentioned I seemed to have spent my whole life working for Americans. He laughed and said he'd spent his whole life working for Brits (his background was finance).
- maxbaines 4y ago
  Good piece of wisdom, I had not thought about it but I think you make a valid point, it applies to other industries too. Not sure there is anything wrong with the approach, I would rather be innovating than maintaining.
mark_undoio 4y ago
Oh and, also: Raspberry Pi https://www.raspberrypi.org/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/ Definitely deserves a mention as it at least has quite big mind share. And Frontier: https://www.frontier.co.uk/ https://www.frontier.co.uk/ Who develop various games including, possibly most famously in these circles, Elite Dangerous.
vidarh 4y ago
> What have we got now? Graphcore. Semiconductor company doing accelerators for machine learning, based in Bristol. Raised $200m at a $1.7bn valuation in 2018. EDIT2: There's also XMOS in Bristol, which has taken about $100m in funding over the years, but have no idea what their valuation is like. Also (fabless) semiconductor company that seems to have sort-of pivoted towards AI acceleration similar to Graphcore. > edit: I'll also take websites, has the UK got any big website companies? Seems like our biggest are Rightmove and Autotrader Hopin (virtual events; raised about $1bn) Cazoo (online car sales; about 2k employees) Deliveroo (food delivery; market cap of about 1.6bn) Snyk is now apparently Boston based, but was founded in London (cybersecurity); this is a common issue for the European startup space, but perhaps especially so for the UK since startups here tends to target English-speaking markets from the start, in that the incentive to move the companies to the US are pretty significant. Revolut, sort of. Bank license in Lithuania, founders are Russian and Ukrainian, but headquartered in London. EDIT: Babylon Health. "Online first" healthcare provider offering both NHS and private GP services via app/video as the first instance (with offline facilities to complement with face to face examinations when needed). About 2k employees; took about $550m funding at a $2bn valuation in 2019
- coding_unit_1 4y ago
  Starling Bank would be a better example than Revolut.
- samstave 4y ago
  How can you say money laundering for the Eastern Bloc Mafia without saying you're doing money laundering for the Eastern Bloc Mafia ; "Revolut, sort of. Bank license in Lithuania, founders are Russian and Ukrainian, but headquartered in London." - On a serious note: can we determine if any of the Ukranian AIDE went into / through this 'bank'? The City Of London is the money laundering capital - with all their insturments pointing to the companies/countries of the Panama Papers and the other laundering/tax evasion scandals....
colesantiago 4y ago
The UK hasn’t got any memorable tech company that is on the world stage that the public knows. The only ones are Dyson and perhaps ARM which are the long lasting ones the UK has made. Monzo, Wise, Starling and Deliveroo are the latest 2010 cohort the UK has made and that’s about it. The latter cohort may die out or get acquired by FAANG or run out of money and shut down. Compared to the US, the UK keeps selling their companies abroad rather than acquiring them. The US keeps creating more and more successful tech companies. Once ARM chose to IPO in the US I knew it was completely over. Even the LSE is part owned by the US (Microsoft), the UK is slowly giving away their technological sovereignty, not exactly the tech world leaders they keep saying they are. It is a real shame.
- didntreadarticl 4y ago
  The UK hasn’t got any memorable tech company that is on the world stage that the public knows. Yes thats a good way of putting it
- rowanajmarshall 4y ago
  The UK isn't doing that on purpose, it's a natural evolution of not having super-firms like Google and Amazon that have the capital and size to acquire and grow domestic companies. Which itself is an evolution of not having a domestic market the size of Chna or the US (the only two countries with a bigger tech sector than the UK).
Delphiza 4y ago
A few high-tech companies that make really important things that consumers never hear about. * Renishaw. Precision measurement and manufacturing. * Spectris. Scientific instruments. Precision components. * Oxford Instruments. All sorts of high-tech stuff used in science and research Rolls Royce aerospace is pretty cool. There are some defence related companies that do tech stuff. Radar, guidance systems, battlefield comms, that sort of thing. Formula One tech is mostly British. MclLaren, Red Bull Racing, Mercedes are all UK based.
- didntreadarticl 4y ago
  Thats interesting. So like engineering basically
harel 4y ago
I am British, but I wasn't born and raised in the UK. I am always amazed at how low UK born Brits's opinion of the UK is. It's always this defeatist attitude. Life in the UK is not without it's problems, that is for sure. But it's still an order of magnitude better than many other places and a lot of what is taken for granted here is not even dreamed of elsewhere. I guess appreciation requires perspective...
- didntreadarticl 4y ago
  Thats kindof why I asked. I tried to think of UK equivalent to FAANG and couldn't come up with much. But there's lots of interesting responses to my comment, and an idea that kept coming through is that the UK is good at creating new companies but can't grow them beyond a certain point so they get acquired
  - harel 4y ago
    FAANG are a bit of a global entity at this stage. Also, all those British enterprises that are now owned by funds across the globe - that does not change the fact that the hands and brains working in those companies are hands and brains in the UK. And those hands can belong to many nationalities as well, but the core of the companies are here. Sorry if I sounded a bit snarky - I hear this a lot and I'm a bit sensitive to the British self deprecation. I've lived in three western advanced countries, and with all honesty I think we are more than OK here. We can do better, for sure, especially in these crazy times. But we are still having a better time at it than most.
- moremetadata 4y ago
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agd 4y ago

There are lots of tech companies (e.g. Fintech, games etc) however not much hard tech. Like the rest of Europe, we're completely reliant on the US/Asia for cutting edge chips and phones.

didntreadarticl 4y ago
tell me about the big fintech and games ones
- michaelt 4y ago
  If you look at, for example, the UK entries in [1] you'll find many of them are doing loans, payments, insurance and blockchain stuff. (Admittedly, that list is using a definition of 'startup' broad enough to include the UK's second-largest energy supply company) [1] https://sifted.eu/rankings/european-unicorn-startups https://sifted.eu/rankings/european-unicorn-startups

RobotToaster 4y ago

ARM I guess?

didntreadarticl 4y ago
Still in Cambridge but owned by Japans SoftBank Group. Does that count? When I look up 'UKs biggest tech companies' ARM doesnt get a mention.

chrisjc 4y ago

I've probably posted it several times now, but there's a great acquired podcast about ARM. https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/arm-softbank https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/arm-softbank

mark_undoio 4y ago

I don't think there are many big UK computer companies that haven't been absorbed by something else. There was Microfocus: https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/home https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/home They owned SuSE at one time. But MicroFocus now have owners outside the UK. And there was Autonomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Autonomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Autonomy Bought by HP, leading to lots of controversy and legal wrangling when they did get what they had expected.

masfuerte 4y ago
Many Autonomy people went to Darktrace. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darktrace https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darktrace
stevekemp 4y ago
Microfocus is a name I've not heard in a good few years - the last time I heard of them was for their COBOL compilers, on SCO Unixware.
- mark_undoio 4y ago
  They're still making COBOL compilers, as far as I know - targeting Linux and with some modern style Dev tools too. I guess it's a migration path for people getting rid of big iron but unable or uninterested in getting rid of the code they ran.

rowanajmarshall 4y ago

> I guess we might still have some big game studios? We've got Creative Assembly (owned by Japan-based Sega), Rockstar North (previously DMA Design and founded the GTA series, now owned by US-based Rockstar ofc), Jagex (owned by a US PE company), and a whole host of others mostly now owned by US companies. There's a piece of wisdom floating around that the UK is actually really good at building tech and tech-adjacent companies, bu really bad at scaling them beyond a certain point. We don't have the BigTech companies China and the US do (nobody does, really), but we're a pretty open economy that American firms are comfortable doing business with, so lots of promising companies get acquired before they hit _big_.

mike_hearn 4y ago
Yes there's a lot of firms that are actually in some senses UK companies from a tech perspective, but are owned by Americans. I used to work for one. All the engineering work was done out of the UK. The US focused on sales. Funnily enough, when we started working together I was getting drinks with the CEO and I mentioned I seemed to have spent my whole life working for Americans. He laughed and said he'd spent his whole life working for Brits (his background was finance).
maxbaines 4y ago
Good piece of wisdom, I had not thought about it but I think you make a valid point, it applies to other industries too. Not sure there is anything wrong with the approach, I would rather be innovating than maintaining.

mark_undoio 4y ago

Oh and, also: Raspberry Pi https://www.raspberrypi.org/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/ Definitely deserves a mention as it at least has quite big mind share. And Frontier: https://www.frontier.co.uk/ https://www.frontier.co.uk/ Who develop various games including, possibly most famously in these circles, Elite Dangerous.

vidarh 4y ago

> What have we got now? Graphcore. Semiconductor company doing accelerators for machine learning, based in Bristol. Raised $200m at a $1.7bn valuation in 2018. EDIT2: There's also XMOS in Bristol, which has taken about $100m in funding over the years, but have no idea what their valuation is like. Also (fabless) semiconductor company that seems to have sort-of pivoted towards AI acceleration similar to Graphcore. > edit: I'll also take websites, has the UK got any big website companies? Seems like our biggest are Rightmove and Autotrader Hopin (virtual events; raised about $1bn) Cazoo (online car sales; about 2k employees) Deliveroo (food delivery; market cap of about 1.6bn) Snyk is now apparently Boston based, but was founded in London (cybersecurity); this is a common issue for the European startup space, but perhaps especially so for the UK since startups here tends to target English-speaking markets from the start, in that the incentive to move the companies to the US are pretty significant. Revolut, sort of. Bank license in Lithuania, founders are Russian and Ukrainian, but headquartered in London. EDIT: Babylon Health. "Online first" healthcare provider offering both NHS and private GP services via app/video as the first instance (with offline facilities to complement with face to face examinations when needed). About 2k employees; took about $550m funding at a $2bn valuation in 2019

coding_unit_1 4y ago
Starling Bank would be a better example than Revolut.
samstave 4y ago
How can you say money laundering for the Eastern Bloc Mafia without saying you're doing money laundering for the Eastern Bloc Mafia ; "Revolut, sort of. Bank license in Lithuania, founders are Russian and Ukrainian, but headquartered in London." - On a serious note: can we determine if any of the Ukranian AIDE went into / through this 'bank'? The City Of London is the money laundering capital - with all their insturments pointing to the companies/countries of the Panama Papers and the other laundering/tax evasion scandals....

colesantiago 4y ago

The UK hasn’t got any memorable tech company that is on the world stage that the public knows. The only ones are Dyson and perhaps ARM which are the long lasting ones the UK has made. Monzo, Wise, Starling and Deliveroo are the latest 2010 cohort the UK has made and that’s about it. The latter cohort may die out or get acquired by FAANG or run out of money and shut down. Compared to the US, the UK keeps selling their companies abroad rather than acquiring them. The US keeps creating more and more successful tech companies. Once ARM chose to IPO in the US I knew it was completely over. Even the LSE is part owned by the US (Microsoft), the UK is slowly giving away their technological sovereignty, not exactly the tech world leaders they keep saying they are. It is a real shame.

didntreadarticl 4y ago
The UK hasn’t got any memorable tech company that is on the world stage that the public knows. Yes thats a good way of putting it
rowanajmarshall 4y ago
The UK isn't doing that on purpose, it's a natural evolution of not having super-firms like Google and Amazon that have the capital and size to acquire and grow domestic companies. Which itself is an evolution of not having a domestic market the size of Chna or the US (the only two countries with a bigger tech sector than the UK).

Delphiza 4y ago

A few high-tech companies that make really important things that consumers never hear about. * Renishaw. Precision measurement and manufacturing. * Spectris. Scientific instruments. Precision components. * Oxford Instruments. All sorts of high-tech stuff used in science and research Rolls Royce aerospace is pretty cool. There are some defence related companies that do tech stuff. Radar, guidance systems, battlefield comms, that sort of thing. Formula One tech is mostly British. MclLaren, Red Bull Racing, Mercedes are all UK based.

didntreadarticl 4y ago
Thats interesting. So like engineering basically

harel 4y ago

I am British, but I wasn't born and raised in the UK. I am always amazed at how low UK born Brits's opinion of the UK is. It's always this defeatist attitude. Life in the UK is not without it's problems, that is for sure. But it's still an order of magnitude better than many other places and a lot of what is taken for granted here is not even dreamed of elsewhere. I guess appreciation requires perspective...

didntreadarticl 4y ago
Thats kindof why I asked. I tried to think of UK equivalent to FAANG and couldn't come up with much. But there's lots of interesting responses to my comment, and an idea that kept coming through is that the UK is good at creating new companies but can't grow them beyond a certain point so they get acquired
- harel 4y ago
  FAANG are a bit of a global entity at this stage. Also, all those British enterprises that are now owned by funds across the globe - that does not change the fact that the hands and brains working in those companies are hands and brains in the UK. And those hands can belong to many nationalities as well, but the core of the companies are here. Sorry if I sounded a bit snarky - I hear this a lot and I'm a bit sensitive to the British self deprecation. I've lived in three western advanced countries, and with all honesty I think we are more than OK here. We can do better, for sure, especially in these crazy times. But we are still having a better time at it than most.
moremetadata 4y ago
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