Report: U.S. Dominates Global Tech Investment

Although China receives a lot of attention for its rapidly developing tech economy, the U.S. remains the world’s leader in technology investment, according to a report by Tech Nation, a UK network for tech entrepreneurs.

According to the report, U.S. tech scaleups raised $148.75 billion, 49.3% of the global total, more than double that of China over the last four years. In fact, the U.S. holds the record for the most scaleup investment deals made, with more than 100,000 deals in the past three years, putting it ahead of China, India and the UK.

The report also noted that $6.7 billion has been invested in UK tech companies in the first seven months of 2019, with more than half ($3.7B) of these investments coming from the U.S. and Asia. Of that amount, U.S. investors contributed $1.9 billion of the total.  

In a key growth area—artificial intelligence (AI)—the U.S., China and the UK are the three major global AI players, with the U.S raising over $40 billion since 2010, followed by China’s $15 billion and the UK’s $4 billion. The report also noted that U.S. developers dominate digital collaboration and innovation, with 24,580 authors on Github compared to 5,501 in the UK and 3,286 in China. In particular, collaboration between the U.S. and UK tech sectors is strong. This has been highlighted by recent high-profile U.S. investments into UK tech firms, including $230 million from Insight Partner into Checkout.com, Monzo’s $117 million round led by Y Combinator, and $575 million Series G funding for Deliveroo from investors Amazon and Fidelity.

According to the report, the U.S., UK and China are leading the world in creating $1 billion tech companies, with the UK tech sector creating more of these companies than any other European country. Tech Nation noted that 70% of the companies that joined the Future Fifty program this year have operations in the U.S., while 958 UK-headquartered startups and scaleups have expanded operations to the U.S.