Innovative academic startups 2015

Nature Biotechnology's selection of academic spinouts ranked by amount of venture capital raised (Table 1) continues to be dominated by US ventures (7 of 10). Greater access to capital explains why the United States recorded 67 ventures of all types securing A rounds in 2015 (Fig. 1). Elsewhere in the world, the UK, China, Canada, Switzerland and France were the next most successful locations in terms of capitalization, with 10, 6, 5, 3 and 3 companies, respectively; the UK tops the list of average amount raised per round (Table 2).

Table 1 Top ten series A rounds in 2015 for innovative academic startups (as of December 15)

Figure 1: Number of startups by country, 2015.

A-2 rounds of undisclosed amounts left out. Source: BCIQ: BioCentury Online Intelligence.

Table 2 Total and average series A rounds by country, 2015