Tech Nation has recently published its annual report into the UK's digital economy, and the key findings are encouraging for those of us with an interest in the UK tech sector:

1. A quarter of Europe’s top 20 highest investment tech cities in 2019 are in the UK – London, Bristol, Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester.

2. Investment in the UK technology sector increased by 44% last year, reaching £10.1bn. The level of investment in the UK tech sector is the third-highest in the world, following the US and China, and is more than the level of investment into France and Germany combined.

3. This growth is underpinned by strong nation-wide performance of scale-up companies. Almost 82% of tech sector investment was made in the scale-up market (companies with at least 10 employees and annual growth of at least 20%). 45% of the UK’s high-value scale-ups are based outside of London.

4. The report also features some key headlines for Bristol and South West England:

• The South West region attracted £300m VC investment in the digital tech sector in 2019.
• Over the past 5 years, the South West has attracted £438m of investment in emerging technologies. Almost 80% of this was made in the field of AI.
• Bristol is one of the top 20 cities in Europe for overall tech investment and one of the top 10 cities in Europe for emerging tech investment (such as AI, robotics, cybersecurity, blockchain, IoT, and VR). 
• Bristol alone received around 2% of the total investment made in Europe’s emerging tech market in 2019.