The New Frontier - Your weekly science and innovation update - 11th September 2026

Healey's first big speech: double the unicorns, halve the friction

Delivering his first major address as Chancellor at the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry, John Healey set out the spine of the government's forthcoming business growth strategy, declaring the economy "turning a corner" ahead of next month's Budget. Three commitments matter most. First, ambition: a stated goal to double the number of UK unicorn firms, with the Chancellor and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds identifying the next wave and using "the state as an early first customer" to help them scale. Second, sandboxing: new powers, ready to deploy across the economy next year, allowing businesses to safely test frontier technologies "from pavement robots to drones to lifesaving medical treatments". Third, the axe: judicial review reform is being extended from energy projects to all nationally significant infrastructure projects, so that "vexatious litigation and challenge can't block economic growth", and ministers have been told public consultations are no longer always required. A "roadmap to fiscal devolution" will follow at the October Budget.

If nationally significant infrastructure projects genuinely face fewer challenge rounds, timelines shorten for the grid connections, transport schemes, data centres and lab-enabling infrastructure that currently gate innovation-led development. The unicorn ambition, meanwhile, is an occupier pipeline in the making and sandboxing has a physical footprint. Regulators will need real streets, skies, hospitals and campuses to test in. 

Placed-based firepower: The North and Scotland

The most concrete money in the growth speech was regional. The Northern 500 will bring together 500 of the North's most ambitious mid-sized businesses into a single growth community, led by the Great North partnership of Mayors with private sector and central government support, a curated peer network designed to fix the scale-up drop-off outside London. Alongside it, a £150 million British Business Bank fund will invest directly in high-growth firms across the North of England, part of the Chancellor's stated plan to "get behind the most innovative and fast-growing firms" region by region.

A visible cohort of 500 names, mayor-championed growth companies across Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield and the North East and gives landlords a legible occupier pipeline. Mid-sized firms receiving British Business Bank funding will likely require expansion space.

Elsewhere,  the UK Government released the first £52.1 million of the £140 million Local Growth Fund for Scotland (2026/27–2028/29), green-lighting three-year investment plans for five Regional Economic Partnerships selected on lowest household income: Glasgow City Region takes the largest share (£22.7 million released toward a £60.9 million allocation), followed by Edinburgh & South East Scotland, Tay Cities, Ayrshire and Forth Valley (£3.7 million released toward £9.8 million). Funds flow directly to regional leaders rather than Whitehall, for physical infrastructure, "high-growth commercial spaces", skills and business support; Forth Valley's plan includes a Housing Enablement Fund to unlock stalled sites. Government says Scotland ends up to £25 million better off than under the Shared Prosperity Fund, with up to £250 million expected over three years across related programmes.

Regional partnerships will be commissioning workspace, incubator and infrastructure projects from Q4 2026, a direct opportunity for developers and advisors to partner on delivery in Glasgow, Dundee, Ayrshire, Falkirk/Stirling and Fife. The October Budget's fiscal devolution roadmap could extend this model. Advisors should be mapping which combined authorities gain revenue raising powers, because devolved fiscal capacity ultimately underwrites local infrastructure and regeneration pipelines.

The £7.8 billion space strategy

The new UK space strategy pulls all government space investment into one plan backed by a record £7.8 billion to 2030, replacing the 2021 National Space Strategy that a House of Lords report judged to have failed on delivery. It is unapologetically security-led and interventionist, with “reindustrialising” as the government’s own word, and built around core priorities: satellite communications, space domain awareness, in-orbit servicing, assembly and manufacturing, and assured access to space. For the first time, government will take a single approach to buying space technology, starting with satcoms, explicitly to help British firms win work and strengthen UK supply chains.

The allocations sketch a national map of demand: £2.8 billion for connectivity, including SKYNET defence communications and the Connectivity in Low Earth Orbit programme; £880 million for space control and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability; £149 million for ESA's Vigil space-weather mission and £85 million for the National Space Operations Centre; £148 million for European rocket programmes and £30 million for SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland, building sovereign launch; £163 million for science and exploration including the Rosalind Franklin Mars Rover, built in Stevenage; and £190 million through UKRI for astronomy and space science. The sector is already worth £18.6bn and 55,000 direct jobs (81,000 more in the supply chain), with satellite services underpinning roughly 18% of UK GDP.

A single government buying approach starting with satcoms concentrates demand on the established clusters: Stevenage, home to Airbus, the Mars rover and MBDA; Harwell's space campus in Oxfordshire; Glasgow, which builds more small satellites than anywhere in Europe; Leicester's Space Park; Portsmouth; and the Shetland launch economy around SaxaVord. The asset types are specific: cleanrooms, assembly, integration and test halls, secure SC/DV cleared facilities and mission operations centres. For occupiers in the supply chain, the message is to position near anchor primes and programmes now.

Life sciences: Green shoots, global competition and an 81,300 job prize

The ABPI’s UK Pharmaceutical Investment Competitiveness Report 2026 signals a marked improvement in the UK’s position. Since September 2025, £2 billion of industry investment has been committed, spanning AI-enabled drug discovery and large-scale manufacturing. Pharmaceutical FDI reached £167.2 million in the first half of 2026, almost double the total recorded in 2025.

This recovery reflects a policy reset. Measures include a 15% cap on newer-medicine clawbacks, a higher NICE cost-effectiveness threshold, faster MHRA approvals, increased government investment in innovative medicines and three years of tariff-free exports to the US. ABPI estimates this could create 81,300 pharmaceutical jobs by 2035 and increase the sector’s annual direct GVA from £20.4 billion to £33.4 billion.

However, implementation remains critical. UK R&D investment growth continues to trail the global rate, access to new medicines remains limited, clinical trial recruitment has fallen and international competition is intensifying. Skills shortages, visa costs and concerns around patent protection also risk constraining growth.

For real estate, the headcount forecasts provide a figure that helps with demand assumptions. Investment in health data infrastructure as a differentiator, including the £600 million Health Data Research Service and UK Biobank, could strengthen demand from aligned companies. Expanded clinical research delivery centres may support intensified clustering around NHS-anchored hospital campuses.

Other interesting reads this week…

France's Mistral closed its latest VC round at €3 billion, led by Samsung at a €21bn valuation, funding its shift from model lab to full-stack enterprise AI provider that customers can customise and self-host. European sovereignty concerns sharpened this year when a US order temporarily barred foreign nationals from Anthropic's most advanced models – a global shock that both the EU's €5bn-targeting Scaleup Europe Fund and the UK's Sovereign AI Fund now exist to insure against.

London-headquartered Nscale closed roughly $3 billion in investment-grade debt (J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs arranging) for AI campuses in Texas and North Carolina. It was also reported to be seeking up to $3.5 billion more ahead of a planned US IPO.

£175 million first close secured for Molten Ventures Growth Fund, including a £75 million cornerstone commitment from British Business Bank. Growth Fund will provide additional capital for Series B+ investments in high-growth UK and European technology companies.

The UK’s largest private medical imaging company raised $220 million from investors as it eyes a potential IPO and US expansion. The firm was founded to fix the problem of a lack of access to diagnostic imaging, lack of price transparent and increased NHS waiting times.  The company provides a website for booking scans, managing referrals and sharing results, using spare capacity at private providers.

Oxford and Cambridge lead the rankings of top European university for VC-backed founders, and 13 UK universities are featured in the European top 50, more than double the nearest European rival.

Andy Burnham said that national security "can't come at the expense of social security". In the Commons session, Burnham repeated that the government would meet the Nato target of spending 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2035, with a target date for hitting the 3% figure set out in the spending review in the spring.

I have written a fair bit about the changing nature of education, with a greater emphasis on technical training.  This week, British universities pledged to give all undergraduates work experience within a decade. 

Flora Harley’s latest newsletter explores the rise of “bring your own power”. Planning applications increasingly reference solar PV and battery storage as developers, owners and occupiers seek greater control over energy costs, resilience and decarbonisation. As David Goatman notes, demand for on-site and near-site energy projects is growing across the market. Read more.

A former Anthropic researcher has warned that there is a greater than 10% chance that AI “could kill us all by the end of the decade”. The comment adds fuel to the debate over the pace of AI development, how society should prepare for the consequences, and how far governments should go in regulating its rollout. On that cheerful note, have a great weekend!