Balderton Capital: the UK Is Close to Producing Its First £100bn Tech Company

The UK has yet to produce a single technology company worth £100 billion. James Wise of Balderton Capital thinks that could change within the next few years, on one condition: government and investors must act as allies, not as parallel worlds.

Who is speaking and why it matters

Wise holds a rare dual position. As a general partner at Balderton Capital, one of Europe's largest venture funds with a portfolio of more than 200 companies including Revolut, Depop and GoCardless, he sees the market from the inside. He also leads Sovereign AI, the state-backed fund the British government set up to take a systematic part in the race for AI leadership.

That combination makes his assessment a measured one: he speaks neither as a lobbyist nor as a civil servant, but as someone who works on both sides. Wise made his statement at London Tech Week, the main annual forum of the British technology industry.

Where the growth chain breaks

According to Wise, British companies know how to grow up to a point, then stumble on the move to global scale. Series A and B are not a problem. The trouble starts at the stage of aggressive expansion into the US, Asia and continental Europe, when fundamentally larger amounts of capital and a different kind of support are needed.

The key barriers Wise identifies:

• A shortage of large domestic institutional capital: British pension funds have historically invested little in technology
• No state instruments for the scale-up stage (Series C and above)
• The risk of an "exodus" of successful companies: many list on Nasdaq or move their headquarters to the US
• Regulatory uncertainty in the AI sector holds back strategic decisions
• Poor coordination between government programs and investors' real needs

For comparison, Germany and France have already built targeted mechanisms (state guarantees, co-investment instruments and preferential structures) that help keep tech "champions" at home.

What the Sovereign AI Fund should do

The Sovereign AI fund, under Wise's leadership, is meant to be exactly that coordination point: connecting private capital with state resources, reducing risk for late-stage investors and creating conditions in which companies can scale without leaving.

"We are already close.

This is not a question of decades. It is a question of the next few years," Wise said in an interview with Bloomberg.

He did not name specific candidates for the first British "centenary" company. Still, several large fintech firms and AI startups that grew with backing from funds such as Balderton are evidently already moving in the right direction by valuation.

What this means

London has long billed itself as Europe's tech capital, but it has yet to back that up with a company worth hundreds of billions of pounds. If the UK does not build systematic infrastructure to support scaling right now, the next "centenary" company with European roots will most likely trade in dollars on an American exchange.