Britain risks losing the next generation of technology giants unless ministers accelerate reforms to unlock domestic investment, the founder of Octopus Energy has warned.
Greg Jackson, chief executive of the energy company, said the UK could no longer assume that major technology businesses would choose London as the natural destination for raising capital, as domestic pension funds remain underexposed to British companies.
“It is not obvious at the moment for a very large UK tech company where the best place is to list,” Mr Jackson said at The Times CEO Summit.
His warning highlights growing concern among business leaders that Britain’s capital markets are failing to provide the long-term funding needed to scale homegrown technology companies.
Octopus Energy’s technology platform Kraken, valued at £6.4 billion, has attracted billions of pounds from international investors. But Jackson said the overwhelming majority of funding had come from abroad rather than British institutions.
“We have raised $3 billion of investment in total, $2.9 billion of that maybe came from overseas,” he said.
The Octopus founder argued that the decline of domestic investment was partly the result of regulatory changes introduced more than two decades ago, which he described as well-intentioned but damaging to the UK’s ability to channel savings into British businesses.
The result, he warned, is that Britain’s pension system is no longer supporting its own growth companies at the scale seen in other major economies.
Ministers have backed the Mansion House reforms, which aim to encourage pension schemes to invest more in UK assets, but Jackson criticised the pace of change.
“They need to change fast. The reforms to pensions are expected to take place over the next five years — you can’t wait five years,” he said.
The warning comes as governments around the world race to secure leadership in artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and energy technology.
Jackson said Britain needed to match the urgency shown by global technology companies investing heavily in infrastructure, data centres and computing capacity.
“We need Government to act with the same urgency that the biggest tech companies are,” he said.
The stakes, he argued, extend beyond individual businesses.
Without faster action, Britain risks higher energy costs, delays connecting new projects to the electricity grid and reduced ability to support industries from artificial intelligence to logistics and housing.
“Unless we start making some difficult decisions, we are stuck in a world where we have spiralling energy costs, you can’t get a connection [to the grid],” Jackson warned.
James Wise, chair of the Government’s sovereign AI fund, echoed concerns about the UK’s competitiveness, saying companies were increasingly looking overseas for access to computing power and energy capacity.
“That is a huge loss for the UK,” he said.
The intervention adds to pressure on ministers to reform Britain’s investment system as the country attempts to turn its strong research base into globally competitive technology companies.
The message from one of Britain’s most successful technology entrepreneurs was clear: the UK cannot afford to move slowly while rivals move at speed.
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