Companies in the two sectors have been sold for a combined $14.481bn+ with a staggering 87 per cent of the acquisition funding coming from the US. There could be more American-sourced finance involved in deals where the figures were undisclosed.

The largest acquisitions of Cambridge companies involved Abcam ($5.7bn by Danaher), Darktrace ($5.3bn by Thoma Bravo), Jagex (sold for $1.1bn by Carlyle to CVC Capital Partners), Featurespace (c.$929m by Visa), IQGeo ($442m by KKR) and Endomag ($310m by Hologic).

Acquisitions by Cambridge companies totalled more than $5.75bn, with the only disclosed values from AstraZeneca. The company made four acquisitions in the 12 months, all valued above $1bn. AstraZeneca acquired Fusion in Canada for $2.4bn, Gracell in China for $1.2bn, Icosavax in the US for $1.1bn and Amolyt in France for $1.05bn.

Cambridge life science and technology companies raised $2.335bn in the last 12 month period with organisations based on Cambridge Science Park ($578.49m), Babraham Research Campus ($117.68m), Chesterford Research Park ($93.58m) and Granta Park ($618.8m) accounting for 60 per cent of the income.

Of that figure, the lion’ share was raised by local life sciences companies –$1.341bn – with the $994.5m balance hauled in by the Cluster’s technology companies.

The largest Life Science fundraisings were by Bicycle Therapeutics ($555m Post-IPO Equity), 4basebio ($52.2m Equity Issuance and $38.4m Secondary Sale), Nuclera ($75m Series C), T-Therapeutics ($59m Series A) and Constructive Bio ($58m Series A).

Two life science companies secured seed funding topping $10m – Shift Bioscience ($16m) and ExpressionEdits ($13m), while Harness Therapeutics added an extra $5.2m to its seed funding total of $23m.