Following its $38 million fundraising round announced at the end of 2024, French startup Aqemia quickly opened an office in London. One year later, it already employs 15 people there, out of a total workforce of 70 across both sides of the Channel.
For this deeptech company, which has raised more than $100 million to develop an artificial intelligence platform for drug discovery, establishing a presence in the UK was an obvious choice. “The UK, and London in particular, is one of the world’s major hubs for life sciences and biotech, and is highly complementary to the French ecosystem,” says Maximilien Levesque, co-founder and CEO of the company.
World-class research institutions
This attractiveness is no coincidence: it is built on a unique foundation developed over many years. “The UK has a level of ecosystem maturity in life sciences that doesn’t exist anywhere else in Europe,” analyses Simon Turner, partner at the specialist fund Sofinnova Partners, where he leads the ‘Digital Medicine’ strategy.
Indeed, whether in Oxford, Cambridge or London, “the UK has some of the most advanced research institutions in the world, even if the rest of Europe is gradually catching up,” he continues. The country is home to four of the world’s top ten universities in life sciences and ranks among global leaders in the publication of medical scientific papers.
A vast pool of rare talent and skills
A direct result of the strength of academic research is access to highly specialised talent, one of the main drivers for startups choosing to locate to a country that trains 75,000 natural science graduates each year and employs 3.3 million people in healthcare-related roles.
“The main reason [for our move to London] was access to a talent pool within a very mature life sciences ecosystem,” confirms Maximilien Levesque, who himself worked in Oxford and Cambridge before leading a research group at the École Normale Supérieure and launching his startup in Paris.
“You find combinations of skills that are only just beginning to emerge in France, with profiles that already have experience in biotech and share a common language with AI and machine learning players,” explains Aqemia’s CEO. He cites the example of the company’s Head of Computational Chemistry, recruited in London: “He understands the scientific requirements of drug discovery while also being able to speak to the engineering teams that actually code the algorithms.”
Bridging biology, chemistry and computing
This ability to bridge biology, chemistry and computing between fundamental research and “product engineering” characterises an ecosystem in which “the idea of entrepreneurship has existed for much longer than in continental Europe,” notes Simon Turner.
This maturity is particularly evident in the relationships between academia and industry. “Public-private partnerships have been developed for years. We see many large companies working closely with UK research institutions, partly funding them, collaborating, and outsourcing innovation,” explains the investor.
Merck, for example, has invested £1 billion to consolidate its scientific teams at King’s Cross and create an innovation ecosystem in collaboration with the Francis Crick Institute, while Moderna has established its Innovation and Technology Centre (MITC) in Oxfordshire, combining research, development and mRNA vaccine manufacturing.
The latter, officially opened by Health Secretary Wes Streeting last September, coincided with the launch of the £50 million Life Sciences Transformational R&D Investment Fund. This fund aims to attract significant private investment in R&D to the UK, which is essential for economic growth and will help consolidate the country’s position as a leading hub for life sciences innovation.
Strong, coordinated government support
This momentum is underpinned by an ambitious industrial strategy led by the Government. With a clear objective – to become Europe’s life sciences leader by 2030 and the world’s third-largest life sciences economy by 2035 – the UK is deploying significant resources. More than £2 billion in public funding over ten years has been mobilised to support innovation in the sector.
This plan is structured around three interconnected pillars: excellence in R&D, the development of an optimal environment to create, scale and invest, and the promotion of health innovation linked to NHS reform.
In concrete terms, this funding aims to develop health data platforms, strengthen manufacturing capacity, and reduce regulatory barriers in clinical trials, market access and procurement processes. In 2024, the Government secured £400 million in commitments from industry, 75% of which was dedicated to improving clinical research.
Tax incentives and sector-specific initiatives
These measures are complemented by competitive tax incentives: a 20% R&D tax credit, a reduced 10% tax rate on patent-derived profits through the Patent Box, and generous tax deductions on capital investments. Not to mention a 20% VAT rate and the complete absence of withholding tax on dividends, which facilitates international capital flows.
Sector-specific initiatives further reinforce this framework. For engineering biology, £380 million has been allocated under the Industrial Strategy, in addition to the £2 billion already invested over ten years. In manufacturing, up to £520 million in grants will support industrial projects between 2025 and 2030.
The UK has also launched the most significant reform of its clinical trials regulation in 20 years, with the goal of reducing the setup time for commercial interventional clinical trials to under 150 days by March 2026.
To accelerate access to NHS health data, the Government and the Wellcome Trust are jointly investing up to £600 million in a dedicated research service.
One example is the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering (LIHE), affiliated with St Thomas’ Hospital and King’s College London, and supported by four major industrial partners. “It’s a space where you have incredible access to one of the largest NHS trusts in the country, with many startups and scale-ups able to work together, and access to industrial partners for co-development. It’s this type of infrastructure that really helps innovation scale quickly,” says Simon Turner.
A perspective that leads Maximilien Levesque to conclude that in the UK, “there is a real willingness to turn very fundamental science into something useful. That’s something we share on both sides of the Channel.”
The commercial department of the British Embassy in Paris supports French companies in their plans to set up operations in the UK. Click here to find out more.
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