Accelerating enterprise

Additional details on university equity stakes analysis

As outlined in the report, the 2026 analysis of equity stakes considers only non-cash equity granted to universities and to founders. This is a divergence from last year’s methodology, and the implications of this have been explained in the report (section 5 and annex). 

Below we provide more details on how the equity stakes analysis was conducted, the distinction between non-cash and cash shares, and their attribution to different entities on the cap table. The methodology has been strongly inspired by the paper "The Burden of University Stakes for Spin-Outs: Evidence from the United Kingdom". 

Dealroom analysed all shareholders on spinout cap table to identify entities potentially holding university IP-related shares (e.g. universities, technology transfer offices (TTOs), university-affiliated funds). Once the first cap table showing university-held equity was identified, Dealroom classified all other shareholders in that and preceding cap tables using contextual information from company filings, company websites, LinkedIn data, and other public sources. The classification was initially AI-based and subsequently refined through manual review, with each cap table checked for the IP shares calculation.

Shareholders were classified into the following main categories: 

• Founders and early management
• Universities and TTOs, foreign universities and TTOs, research centers and other research institutions
• University-affiliated funds/trusts and venture-builders
• Investors and other unknown shareholders
• Corporates
• The company itself

Following this classification, the first “consolidated” cap table was identified; i.e. the first cap table showing both founders and early management, and university-related shareholdings. 

In the rare cases where the IP agreement occurred at incorporation, equity stakes were calculated through the incorporation filings (IN01). In these cases all shares are non-cash, and the share split was aggregated among founders and early management, universities and other entities. The spinout date was assumed to be the date of the IN01 filing.

In the vast majority of cases, the IP agreement underpinning the equity transfer is signed after incorporation and is therefore first visible in the company’s annual confirmation statements (CS01 and its predecessor AR01). In many cases this is the first confirmation statement filed; in others it has been found to occur a few years after. The equity split was calculated based on that cap table using the methodology outlined below. Very rare cases where this occurred more than five years after incorporation have been excluded. These are edge cases where it would not be feasible to reconstruct the original non-cash equity split.

Where IP agreements occurred after incorporation, share allotment statements (SH01) were used to distinguish cash and non cash shares and to reconcile these with holdings reported in the accounts. In a minority of the cases, the SH01 filings indicated that certain non-cash shares were issued in consideration for IP. In these cases, those shares were attributed directly to universities and other IP holding entities, with remaining non-cash shares attributed to founders and other entities on the cap table.

In the remaining cases, methodological complexity arises from the lack of required reporting detail for individual share transactions in UK public filings. SH01 filings only specify the transaction date, number of shares issued, share class (e.g. ordinary shares - sometimes of different types, e.g. ordinary A/B/C, preferred shares, seed shares), and price per share. The filing does not identify the specific shareholder(s) involved in each transaction.

For these cases we used the following price inference and allocation methodology from the paper mentioned above. We first applied a direct inference:

We matched the shares in that statement to earlier SH01 filings using one of four indicators:

• Direct Evidence: The Certificate of Incorporation or SH01 forms explicitly state the price/allotment.
• Unique Price: All shares ever issued have the same price.
• Share Class: Distinct prices are linked to specific classes (e.g. Ordinary vs. Series A).
• Share Blocks: The number of shares in an SH01 block matches a specific shareholder's total on the cap table.

If direct inference fails, shares are allocated from the lowest price to the highest price in this priority (the "pecking-order" assumption):

1. Founding Team (Highest priority for the cheapest/non-cash shares).
2. University, Trusts, and Affiliated Funds.
3. Investors and Unknown Shareholders (Assumed to hold the most expensive shares).

The spinout date is taken equal to the IN01 date in the cases where that filing represents the first consolidated cap table, while in cases of consolidated annual statements (CS01 and AR01) the spinout date is taken as the date of the SH01 transaction where the university IP non-cash shares were allocated.