Entries are now open for the 2025 Business Weekly Awards competition.
The Awards are designed to cover companies of all sizes and at different stages of evolution from raw startups to established world leaders. Closing date for entries is June 30, 2025.
Enter the awards by emailing Business Weekly CEO and chair of Awards judges tquested@businessweekly.co.uk, or completing the form below.
The sponsors in alphabetical order are Arm, AstraZeneca, Barclays, Bruntwood SciTech, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Cambridge Judge Business School, Cambridge Network, Cambridge Science Park, Cambridge Spark, Chesterford Research Park, Marshall of Cambridge, Mills & Reeve, Murray Edwards College, PwC, Savills, Stansted Airport, St John's Innovation Centre and Unity Campus.
Award categories
Startup of the Year: For a start-up in any sector deemed to have the most potential to become globally successful.
Cambridge Judge Graduate Business of the Year: For a venture that in the last 12 months has benefited from engagement with the wider Cambridge ecosystem – in terms of support and giving back –and is retaining graduate talent.
Sir Michael Marshall Engineering Excellence Award: For a company or individual who in the last 12 months has added game-changing engineering to any product in any business & industry.
Disruptive Technology: For a company in any sector whose science or technology is deemed to be genuinely game-changing on a broad scale.
The Pathfinder Award: For a company whose science or technology is influencing next generation Life Science innovation.
Technology Scale-up: For a hi-tech company that in the previous 12 months has broadened its market reach, scaled headcount, secured increased investment or added noticeable impact to its technology proposition.
Life Science Scale-up: For the Life Science business that has shown most progress in the preceding 12 months in terms of scaling headcount, broadening vertical markets or increasing the potency of its pipeline.
Life Science Innovation: For the organisation or individual who has done the most to further the cause of life science discovery for the benefit of human healthcare internationally.
International Trade Champion: For a business in any industry that has significantly broadened its export sales or access to global markets.
Collaboration of the Year: This Award is designed to recognise a meeting of minds and marriage of expertise in any field of activity in the last 12 months without which the driver of the initiative would not have been able to make such signifiant progress.
Quoted Company of the Year: For a company in the region based on any public exchange which in the last 12 months has fleshed out its proposition and maintained or enhanced value for its shareholders.
Female Founder in AI: For an inspirational female founder or co-founder of a growing company deemed successful in the sphere of Artificial Intelligence.
Sustainability Champion: For a company whose science or technology is deemed to hold most potential to dramatically reduce or eliminate the carbon footprint of industry and achieve demonstrable sustainability.
AI Company of the Year: For a business in any sector of business that in the last 12 months has made demonstrable progress in developing or monetising artificial intelligence.
Deal of the Year: For a deal that has raised significant growth funding, enhancing the recipient’s ability to deploy the investment in a game-changing manner. Or a significant Merger or Acquisition that has strengthened the local party’s ability to expand.
From all of the entrants, judges will choose a Business of the Year to join a Hall of Fame that includes Abcam, Acambis, Arm, Autonomy, AVEVA, Bicycle Therapeutics, British Sugar, Cambridge Antibody Technology, Cambridge Quantum Computing (Quantinuum), CSR, Darktrace, Domino, Frontier Developments, Horizon Discovery, Ieso Digital Health, IQGeo, Paragraf, Perkins Engines, Pi Group, Ryanair, Sepura, TTP, Treatt plc, Virata and Xaar plc, among others.
The winning company will, in the previous 12 months, have shown outstanding progress on multiple fronts. It will have demonstrated financial stability and commercial astuteness in furthering a stand-out and globally sought after proposition in any line of business – and be built to last.
And there is a bonus this time around. To mark the 35th Anniversary of the competition, a special Champion of Champions Award will be made. The winner will be chosen from all of the previous Businesses of the Year dating back to the first competition in May, 1990 and rooted in our Hall of Fame pantheon. Which previous Business of the Year has made most commercial progress and best stood the test of time in terms of its contribution to commerce and humanity?
Around 200 or so executives and special guests will discover the answer at a glittering, invitation-only Awards banquet at Queens’ College, Cambridge on Monday September 15, 2025.