A view of the AstraZeneca global Research and Development facility, including the company's headquarters, at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.Cambridge, the English city renowned for its university, scientific breakthroughs and status as a technology hub, has its sights on becoming the next Silicon Valley.
The initiative comes as a report by HSBC bank this month showed the UK as the world’s third-biggest “tech ecosystem”, with venture-capital investment totalling $21.3 billion in 2023.Leading the way is the United States with $150 billion, followed by China at almost a third of that total. Innovate Cambridge – a collaboration between the university and major companies including drugs group AstraZeneca and Microsoft – aims by 2035 to double the city’s “unicorns”, or privately held startups valued at more than $1 billion.
Excluding this factor, the 2023 Global Innovation Index has Paris as Europe’s top cluster, or area with the highest density of inventors and scientific authors. Population size does not appear to be a key factor in whether Cambridge becomes the next Silicon Valley.