Gasholder Park with reflective walkway in King’s Cross, London, UK.
Mike Kemp | In Photography | Getty Images
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dispatch
The term Silicon Roundabout was first coined in 2008 to describe a cluster of technology companies based around the intersection of City Road and Old Street in north London.
However, the region became a household term in November 2010 when the then new prime minister, David Cameron, put the region at the heart of his government’s growth goals.
“Silicon Valley is the world’s leading place for high-tech growth and innovation, but there’s no reason why Silicon Valley should be so dominant,” he said at the time.
“Something is happening in East London. Just three years ago there were only 15 tech start-ups around Old Street and Shoreditch, but now there are more than 100 tech companies in the area.
“East London has the potential to create one of the most dynamic working environments in the world.”
In 2013, traffic passes around the Old Street roundabout, also known as the “Silicon Roundabout.”
Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Prime Minister David Cameron championed the concept with his Tech Nation initiative, which over the next decade helped launch hundreds of start-ups, including around a third of Britain’s unicorns.
But despite all the hype, it was a false dawn.
Amid the turmoil following the 2016 Brexit vote, Cameron’s successor, Prime Minister Theresa May, authorized the takeover of British tech champion Arm Holdings by Japan’s SoftBank.
Due to the coronavirus and the rise of working from home, the Silicon Roundabout area has lost its prestige, and Tech Nation itself will cease to be a government agency in March 2023.
London Tech Week, which began on Monday, brought back memories of those days, attracting more than 30,000 attendees, including 8,250 startups and 1,500 investors.
A blizzard of data released before the event highlighted Britain’s technological prowess.
The Global Tech Ecosystem Index 2026, compiled by data provider Dealroom, ranks London as the world’s fourth-largest tech ecosystem, taking over Europe’s top spot from Paris. Meanwhile, Cambridge was ranked third in the world’s Density Leaders ranking, which measures innovation output relative to population size, behind the San Francisco Bay Area and Boston.
Dealroom said London has regained its top spot in Europe due to “increased venture capital investment, continued unicorn creation and depth across sectors”, noting that London’s tech companies raised $17.7 billion last year. The city is currently home to 138 unicorns, including Wayve, Granola, OLIX, and ElevenLab.
“Golden Triangle”
Yet, for all its strengths, particularly in AI, fintech and life sciences, the question remains whether the UK is too reliant on London, Cambridge and Oxford.
Rishi Sunak, a former chancellor and current advisor to Microsoft and Open AI, says that’s not the case. Over the weekend, he highlighted success stories outside the Golden Triangle, including Newcastle-based Sage, which provides software to small and medium-sized businesses around the world, and Grand Theft Auto, a video game series made in Dundee. He also noted the UK’s emerging strength in quantum computing.
Meanwhile, the hottest new tech hub in London itself is the once run-down King’s Cross district, where OpenAI and Anthropic are soon to open offices. There they will join Google DeepMind (founded in London), Meta, Wayve, ScaleAI, and Synthesia.
Saul Klein, founder of early-stage investor Phoenix Court, told the Daily Telegraph in April that the area around King’s Cross now boasts the largest concentration of technology companies outside of Silicon Valley and Beijing.
“When you look at the density of talent in the science, technology and creative industries, there is literally no other place on earth like it,” he added.
Across town, the Silicon Roundabout no longer exists. Following a late-planning and over-budget redevelopment by Transport for London, the roundabout was replaced last year with a Byzantine road and cycle lane layout, dotted with traffic lights and causing constant traffic congestion in the area.
One might hope that this is not a metaphor for British technology.
— Ian King
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Coming soon
June 12: GDP (April)
June 15: Rightmove House Price Index
