East of England VC investment in Q4 up 61 per cent

A total of £15.5 billion was invested across the UK during 2024 – the highest in Europe.

KPMG’s latest Venture Pulse report shows that £480.5 million of VC cash was raised by East of England companies between October and December – a massive increase of 61 per cent from the prior quarter.

Forty-eight transactions were completed across the region, up from 33 in the previous quarter, with Cambridge leading the charge with exactly half of the region’s VC deals.

Life sciences businesses drove the majority of activity in the East of England with almost £150m pumped into 18 healthcare, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology companies during the quarter.

Investment into business products and services and IT sectors remained strong, receiving £60.3m and c£40m, respectively.

This latest report comes just weeks after KPMG released the findings of its KPE Barometer, which found that more than a fifth of the region’s private business owners see VC as a means to finance business diversification this year.

Joe Faulkner, East Anglia Senior Partner at KPMG UK, said: “It’s great to see venture capital investments are up on the already high levels of the previous quarter.

“Cambridge continues to be the jewel in the crown of the East of England’s outstanding life sciences development cluster, playing an integral role in a thriving VC ecosystem and driving forward the advancement of the healthcare sector.

“We’re excited to see the growth of the East of England’s most promising private enterprises in 2025, especially those that make the most of VC funding to pursue expansion.”

The national outlook was also encouraging, KPMG reports. The UK attracted the highest level of VC investment in Europe in 2024, following a strong end to the year. It raised a total of £15.5 billion VC investment after funding in Q4 jumped by more than a third from £3.1bn to £4.4bn. This was driven largely by a $1.3bn raise from Greenscale, a London-based AI data centre firm.

A total of 569 businesses made up the £4.4bn investment, including £409m raised by Insider and £303m raised by Lighthouse.