The Top 10 Highest-Valued Companies in the UK | 2023 Ranking
Farzana Haque, 29 June 2023
It’s been hard to ignore the staggering decline in startup valuations over the last few quarters. With high-interest rates, examples like Klarna’s remarkable 85% drop in valuation last year have raised concerns among investors and entrepreneurs alike. Against this backdrop of a fluctuating market, we wondered which companies in the UK currently have the highest valuations. So, we dug into our valuation data to uncover the 10 companies leading by valuations.
By looking at private UK companies with an equity finance round between 1 June 2020 and 31 May 2023, we’ve ranked the top 10 high-valued companies based on pre-money valuation.
Top 10 UK companies by valuation
01.
Revolut
Latest pre-money valuation: £35.3b
Date of latest round: May 2023
Total amount raised: £1.27b
Sector: Fintech
Region: London
Incorporated: 2013
Challenger bank Revolut is a payment services provider, originally offering money transfer and exchange, and expanding to enter the cryptocurrency business in 2018. This fintech company has dozens of products which allow customers to make transactions and invest money, varying from free to paid subscriptions. It already operates in several countries, with plans to launch in Brazil, India and New Zealand soon.
02.
AMO Pharma
Latest pre-money valuation: £35.2b
Date of latest round: May 2022
Total amount raised: £62.8m
Sector: Genomics
Region: Leeds
Incorporated: 2015
AMO Pharma specialises in developing drugs for rare childhood-onset neurogenetic disorders with limited or no treatment options. In April of this year, the company announced the successful completion of their current clinical study, REACH-CDM, which is a double-blind placebo-controlled study targeting myotonic dystrophy. The study aims to support future marketing authorisation for congenital myotonic dystrophy treatment.
03.
Howden Group Holdings
Latest pre-money valuation: £8.82b
Date of latest round: April 2023
Total amount raised: £1.98b
Sector: Insurance services
Region: London
Incorporated: 1994
Howden Group Holdings is a group of businesses, spanning the insurance value chain. Its trading operations include wholesale and retail insurance broking, reinsurance broking, and underwriting agencies. The Group consists of Howden (an international challenger broker), DUAL (an international MGA – Managing General Agent), and HX (a leading digital, data, and analytics business). It operates in 45 countries globally.
04.
Inspired
Latest pre-money valuation: £6.18b
Date of latest round: May 2022
Total amount raised: £474m
Sector: Education
Region: London
Incorporated: 2013
Inspired operates a group of independent schools, with around 50k students globally. Its schools are non-denominational and co-educational, and cover nursery until 18 years. The education services company buys as well as builds schools around the world. Currently, it offers its services to 70,000 students in over 80 schools across 24 countries. In 2022, the group acquired a virtual teaching company, My Online Schooling.
05.
Teya
Latest pre-money valuation: £5.55b
Date of latest round: April 2021
Total amount raised: £358m
Sector: Fintech, E-commerce
Region: London
Incorporated: 2019
Teya develops payment processing and point-of-sale technology for merchants. The company operates in 16 countries with 2,000 employees. Its latest figures show the company have 300k+ active users making over £500m in transactions every year. To date, it has made four acquisitions with its latest one—that of payment authorisation system startup, Paymentology—closing in December 2021.
06.
Hopin
Latest pre-money valuation: £5.18b
Date of latest round: March 202
Total amount raised: £766m
Sector: Events, SaaS
Region: London
Incorporated: 2019
Hopin provides a cloud-based event management platform, designed to help businesses to create networking events. The company has 10m+ users and five product lines. Hopin’s proprietary software combines video with live chat, polling, and randomised breakout rooms to increase event participation and interaction. Its customers include the United Nations, NATO, and Unilever.
07.
Zepz
Latest pre-money valuation: £3.22b
Date of latest round: August 2021
Total amount raised: £528m
Sector: Consumer banking and financial services, SaaS
Region: London
Incorporated: 2009
Fintech Zepz (previously WorldRemit Group) provides online money transfer and airtime top-up services, working with WorldRemit and Sendwave. Customers can download the app for free and send money online to over 130 countries, in a fast and secure way. In 2020, Zepz transferred over $10b for customers and processed over 50m customer transactions.
08.
Black Swan Data
Latest pre-money valuation: £3.21b
Date of latest round: June 2022
Total amount raised: £44.3m
Sector: Big data
Region: London
Incorporated: 2011
Black Swan Data uses data analytics to provide clients with customer insights that can be used for marketing purposes. The company claims its predictive analytics has a 89% accuracy rate. With four global offices and 160 employees, the company has imminent plans to expand internationally. In its last funding round, a year ago in June 2022, it raised £15.2m to support its expansion into the US market.
09.
Monzo
Latest pre-money valuation: £2.69b
Date of latest round: January 2022
Total amount raised: £927m
Sector: Challenger bank, Fintech
Region: London
Incorporated: 2015
Monzo operates an online challenger bank, with over 5.78m users. This fintech company provides retail banking services through its mobile app, having gained its full UK banking licence in April 2017. Customers accessing its accounts through the app can use built-in features to track and budget their money, instantly open a savings account, and access loans.
10.
Starling Bank
Latest pre-money valuation: £2.61b
Date of latest round: April 2022
Total amount raised: £715m
Sector: Consumer banking and financial services
Region: London
Incorporated: 2014
Starling Bank is another fintech for businesses and consumers. This challenger bank has an app and online banking platform, with many features and different accounts (including personal, business, joint, and teen) suitable for their 1m customers. It also offers a range of lending products and access to third-party financial services.
What are the top companies in the UK based on annual turnover?
We track every private company in the UK. Using this data, we’ve taken a look at private UK companies with an equity finance round between 1st June 2020 and 31st May 2023. We’ve then ranked the top ten based on annual turnover. At the very top of the list is Monzo, with a total turnover of over £517m. The app-based challenger bank has secured 14 fundraisings to date, worth £927m. It also received two grants from Innovate UK, the most recent of which was in October 2022.
Second on the list is Amazon Filters, a Surrey-based business that manufactures and supplies filtration equipment. Their turnover came to just over £130m, and to date, they have received £1.5m across two fundraisings.
Oncologica came in third on our list, with over £120m in turnover during the selected dates. This company provides a range of precision Oncology services, addressing the demand for personalised cancer medicine. They have gone through two rounds of fundraising, receiving a total of £850k.
What are the top companies in the UK based on annual profit?
Using the same parameters as above, we then looked at the top companies in the UK based on their annual profits. Somewhat surprisingly, there were only eight companies in total that announced profits in this data set. Oncologica took the top spot, with close to £21.5m in annual profit between 1st June 2020 and 31st May 2023, closely followed by Amazon Filters with just over £16m. In third place were Veeqo, a software development company focusing on building inventory and fulfilment platforms. Their annual profit came in at just over £9m, with £7,18m secured over 14 fundraisings, and a further £500k grant received from the Welsh Government in 2017. This company was acquired by Amazon in March 2022, and is no longer tracked by Beauhurst for this reason.
What are the top companies in the UK based on number of employees?
The number of staff that a business employs is also an important measure of their success. In looking at this data set, we can see that Caffe Nero is right at the top of the list, with over 3,600 members of staff. The Italian coffee chain has more than 600 locations in the UK, and has been named in a number of high growth lists since 2013 (the most recent being the Fast Track Top Track 250 in September 2020. Grosvenor Health and Social Care operates a group of nursing, health and support service businesses, and comes in second place on our list with 2,728 members of staff. Since being incorporated in February 2009, they have made two acquisitions, namely Rainbow Services in 2019 and Active Care Ayrshire in 2021.
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