TL;DR - at a glance

London Tech Week 2026 is an annual event that brings together founders, investors and policymakers from across the UK’s technology sector to discuss its future direction. One theme stood out across this year’s Workspace-hosted panel on AI, robotics and deep tech: proximity. Being physically based near a varied mix of other businesses is becoming a meaningful growth factor for small companies in fast-moving sectors. Founders described unplanned introductions, arising simply from where they were based, that turned into suppliers, partners and customers. 

The broader backdrop: London-based AI startups raised a record £2.7bn in VC funding in 2024 – 32 per cent of the capital’s total – making London Europe’s leading AI hub (Source: Startup Genome, London Ecosystem Report, 2026). For founders choosing where to base a growing team, who else is in the building may matter as much as the building itself.

1. Why does proximity matter more, not less, as sectors speed up?

Like it or not, we are all time-poor. It takes time to find the right connections through formal channels – introductions, cold outreach, conference badges –  alone. It would be easy to assume that video calls and remote work have made physical location matter less. What I heard across London Tech Week pointed the other way: the businesses worth talking to aren't in your network. They often emerge from being surrounded by a diverse mix of other businesses.

The most useful connections founders described came from businesses in completely different sectors –  manufacturing, logistics, professional services –  that they wouldn’t normally encounter. Founders based among a larger number of other companies described a bigger pool of potential partners, suppliers and customers within easy reach.

This isn't just anecdotal feedback from SME founders. The UK Government's own Innovation Clusters Map is built on the same principle: that proximity between firms leads to knowledge spillovers, increased productivity and greater resilience to economic shocks - what economists call agglomeration effects

2. What changes when small companies share a building with different sectors?

The connections that matter most often turn out to be the ones a founder wouldn’t have gone looking for. A functioning business ecosystem brings together a mix of sectors within a network of locations – not just similar start-ups clustered together. What struck me is that the value of a small company’s location isn’t fixed at move-in; it grows as more connections form over time.

This is something I see across our own portfolio at Workspace Group PLC. We're not a coworking operator –  our customers have their own private offices, studios and workshops – but the buildings are designed to bring those separate businesses together. Shared cafés, breakout areas and communal spaces give companies room to cross paths, so a founder keeps their own front door and still ends up in conversation with the business two floors up. Across 50-plus buildings, that adds up to a lot of unplanned connections.

3. What makes connections worth having?

Not all connections are equal.  The ones proximity produce - across sectors not within them - can evolve into partnership and tend to be the ones that actually move a business, bringing:

1. A new customer base, not just advice. A connection with a business in the same field offers useful tips. However, a business in a different one gives access to its market, allowing businesses to expand their reach. 
2. A capability that doesn’t have to be built in house: In a sector moving as fast as AI, the gap is rarely ambition - it’s specialist skills. A recent EY poll of tech CEOs found 83 per cent are prioritising joint ventures and alliances in the coming months, up nearly 30 per cent since the start of 2025. Borrowing a neighbour's strength beats waiting to hire it. 
3. Shared cost and risk: A joint pilot, a piece of co-funded research, a shared event become more affordable split two ways.
4. Relationships that compound: The connections founders rate highest are usually the ones they never went looking for. Left to grow, they turn a single introduction into a long-term partnership that keeps returning value years later.

And it's not only a tech story. Two of our own customers - Handle, a recruitment firm, and Better Space, a workplace wellbeing business - share no market, yet ran joint research and events that put both companies in front of new audiences. Handle provided the research credibility; Better Space gave Handle something new to say. Neither would have found the other without having met at Workspace.

4. What does London’s global position mean for companies scaling from the UK?

Another key takeaway from London Tech Week was the importance of London’s role on the global stage. The capital is a magnet to some of the world’s top tech talent, and acts as a conduit to the global tech talent pool.

London puts companies scaling from the UK within reach of international capital and partners that would otherwise be much harder to access. London-based AI startups raised a record £2.7bn in VC funding in 2024 - 32 per cent of the capital’s total - making London Europe’s leading AI hub (Source: Startup Genome, London Ecosystem Report, 2026). I heard the same point from businesses based well outside the capital - advanced manufacturers in the West of England, for instance - who described their connection into London’s network as a route to international markets, opening up opportunities for their services and innovation to reach a global stage.

5. THE REAL LESSON FROM LONDON TECH WEEK

For all the talk of AI, automation and deep tech, London Tech Week kept returning to something entirely human: who you know, who you sit near and the conversations you didn't plan. The founders I met still put connection at the centre of how they grow. The tools change fast. The value of being in the right room, near the right people, doesn't.