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Cambridge Enterprise’s 2021 Annual Review tells a story of success and growth despite the challenges of the pandemic.
Cambridge, the unicorn capital of Europe, is a leader in producing global businesses and Cambridge Enterprise plays a pivotal role in this success. In the last year we supported the formation of the latest Cambridge unicorn, Centessa Pharmaceuticals, which had a $1.8 billion market capitalisation on NASDAQ post-IPO. Centessa incorporates three University spin-out companies founded through support from Cambridge Enterprise: ApcinteX, Morphogen-IX, and Z-Factor.The Centessa success story demonstrates our ambition and ability to support Cambridge companies to scale to global levels.
We continue to excel in achieving knowlege and technology transfer to create impact; there were 154 licences, up 25% on the previous year, a record 430 consultancy contracts, and a doubling in our seed fund portfolio valuation to £107 million. Importantly, including our support for translational funding, we returned £17 million to the University, its departments, its academics and third parties.
We also lead the way in supporting new companies that are commercialising innovations in response to the climate crisis. In 2021 we invested in three Cambridge companies—Nyobolt, Echion Technologies, and Carbon Re—which are all developing new technologies focused on reducing carbon emissions. These three companies collectively raised over £20 million of investment and are helping to move the world to a more sustainable future.
We are currently finalising a new strategy that will build on our strong position at the heart of the Cambridge entrepreneurial ecosystem. We want to enhance our support for the Cambridge academic community in developing impact from their research. We also commit to playing a more active role in contributing to the future success of the Cambridge Cluster by enhancing how we connect it to the talent and innovation within the University.
Read the Annual Review 2021
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