Healthtech sits where life sciences meets software. UK companies in this field are developing drugs, diagnostics and medical devices, and building the computational layer that runs alongside them.
The companies included in this ranking have raised £11.3b across 597 equity fundraisings. A single institutional share placing by AstraZeneca accounts for £2.69b of that figure.
In this ranking, we’ve used the Beauhurst platform to identify 100 UK-headquartered healthtech companies that meet our methodology, then ranked them by the total equity funding they have raised.
That distinction matters. This is not a list of the UK’s largest life sciences companies. Instead, it provides a snapshot of the businesses combining health and medicine with software and data that have attracted the most equity investment.
UK healthtech companies: sector overview
Healthtech describes companies applying software, data and connected hardware to health and medicine. What qualifies a company for this ranking is not that it develops a drug or a device, but that it builds a computational layer alongside it—machine learning models, imaging analysis, cloud platforms and connected devices.
The companies analysed for this article broadly fall into three groups.
The first is AI drug discovery. These companies use models to design and screen therapeutic compounds.
The second is clinical diagnostics and imaging, where algorithms read scans, blood samples and genomic data.
The third covers devices, robotics and remote care. These companies put hardware into hospitals and homes, and build the platforms that connect patients to clinicians outside them.
On the Beauhurst platform, 85 of the 104 companies analysed are classified as application software businesses. Data provision and analysis applies to 50 and clinical diagnostics to 40, while pharmaceuticals (35), biotechnology (33) and medical devices (25) mark the depth of the life sciences side. Companies can operate across more than one classification.
There are now 104 companies in this cohort, compared with 43 at the end of 2015. That is growth of 142% over a decade.
But unlike the newer sectors we have ranked, this one has stopped adding companies. Foundations peaked at 13 in 2017, and only five businesses in the cohort have been incorporated since the start of 2022. What is growing is the capital, not the population.
Key findings
AstraZeneca tops the ranking with £2.69b. That figure is not venture capital but a 2019 institutional share placing, raised to fund the company’s cancer collaboration with Daiichi Sankyo.
Behind it sit Isomorphic Labs (£2.02b), the DeepMind spinout building an AI drug design engine, CMR Surgical (£1.03b), the Cambridge surgical robotics company, Exscientia (£300m) and BenevolentAI (£253m).
Funding is highly concentrated, and the top two companies distort everything below them. AstraZeneca accounts for 24% of the £11.3b total and Isomorphic Labs for 18%. The five highest-funded companies represent 56%, while the top 10 represent 63%.
Treating AstraZeneca as an incumbent rather than a startup changes the picture. The sector total falls to £8.56b, the top five share falls to 44%, and the share of capital raised since 2020 rises from 58% to 77%.
The same correction moves the peak year. 2019 appears to be the record at £3.26b, but £2.69b of that is the placing, leaving £575m. On that basis, 2026 sits ahead of every other year on the series, with £1.86b raised by September.
This is also the most geographically distributed sector we have ranked, reaching 15 regions. London is home to 45 of the 100 companies named, followed by the East of England with 24. That is the highest share any region outside London has held in this series, and almost all of it is in and around Cambridge. The South East adds 12, taking the golden triangle to 81.
Other parts of the UK have a smaller but notable presence. Northern Ireland is home to four companies and Wales to three, both unusually strong showings for this series.
The most active investors tell the same story. Parkwalk Opportunities EIS Fund has backed 26 rounds, followed by Cambridge Angels with 25 and Cambridge Innovation Capital with 13.
The stage spread is the widest in the series: 38 companies at growth stage, 38 at venture, 15 established and five at seed, alongside three exits, two zombies and three that have died.
Because the search excludes only companies dissolved at Companies House, rather than requiring active status, failures remain visible. That gives a mortality rate of 2.9%, in line with biotech and precision medicine and well below software-led sectors. The three exits are Exscientia, Intelligent Ultrasound Group and Kheiron Medical.
