In the first part of our series, we’re looking at England’s fastest-growing companies.
When you Google “what is England famous for?”, a number of things come up. Pubs, Stonehenge, the royal family, the NHS, even rain. But despite its small geographical size, England is a commercial powerhouse competing with the USA, China, India, and more.
It’s also home to some huge global businesses such as BP, Shell, and Unilever, as well as providing a platform for startups and SMEs — just think of Revolut, Deliveroo, and Monzo, all started in England. In this latest article in our series of the UK’s fastest-growing companies, we’ve taken a deep dive into England’s rich high-growth ecosystem.
Discover England’s business landscape
Before exploring the companies that made the list, let’s take a closer look at England’s business landscape in general.
In England, there are currently 4.78m active companies. Out of those active companies, nearly a third are located in the nation’s capital (1.34m). Following on from this in second and third place, 640k of active companies are located in the South East and 479k are in the North West.
Industries and sectors
Looking at industries, property development and construction has the most active companies in England equating to approximately 12.1% of all English companies.
Application software was in second place making up 12% of English Companies. Under the umbrella of application software, we see a range of subsectors such as SaaS. There are currently 6.45k active SaaS companies in England.
It’s all worth mentioning artificial intelligence which also often comes under the application software umbrella. There are currently 6.99k companies in the active AI industry in England.
In third place is restaurants, pubs, cafes and takeaways which makes up 7.5% of English companies.
Gender balance of founders
When it comes to gender balance of founding teams, for companies that have reported its gender balance, 22.6k companies have an all-male founding team whereas just 3.4k of active UK companies have an all-female founding team.
Foundations and cessations
We also looked at English company foundations and cessations. So far in 2025, there’s been 407k foundations and 335 cessations. Overall, in 2024 there were 732k foundations and 601k cessations, and as we’re a little over half way through the year, so far we’re on track to finish with similar numbers.
Equity investment in England
When looking at equity investment, England secures the top spot out of the UK’s four nations in Q1 2025 for number of deals made (934) with the highest amount invested (£3.35b). In fact, England comprises 90% of the UK’s deals and 92% of the total amount raised in Q1 2025. Of England’s regions, London comes out in the top spot for both, with 48% of deals and 62% of amount raised.
England’s (and London’s) dominance in equity investment is consistent and long-running, comfortably claiming the top spot since our data began in 2011. Though from 2023 to 2024 there was a marginal downtick in the proportion of deals made and amount invested in England, from 92% to 91% (deals made), and from 96% to 94% (amount raised).
Discover more on the UK’s equity funding ecosystem in our quarterly report, The State of UK Investment: Q1 2025.
Ranking methodology
To make our list of England’s high-growth companies, we’ve used data from the Beauhurst platform, which was used in conjunction with research from the Sunday Times to create the Sunday Times Hundred. This ranking, published in the Sunday Times on 29th June, ranks the UK’s fastest growing companies by sales growth over a three year period.
What is The Sunday Times Hundred?
The Sunday Times Hundred is a ranking of the UK’s 100 fastest-growing companies.
This high-growth list is compiled using a combination of our data and independent research from the team at The Sunday Times. It highlights exceptional UK companies that meet strict criteria:
- £5m+ turnover
- Independent, privately-owned and UK headquartered companies
- Have four years of accounts, with sales growth measured by CAGR (compound annual growth rate) over the latest three financial years
To create this article, we have used the same dataset. This means every company on this list has also featured on The Sunday Times Hundred 2025.
