Because of limited supply and sky-high rents in the capital, young technology companies are being pushed to find office space on the outskirts.
Many technology companies in London have gravitated toward Hoxton, Clerkenwell and Shoreditch; however, much of the office space in these areas is now being turned into residential space.
The roundabout at the junction of City Road and Old Street in London is now known as Silicon Roundabout because of the prevalence of technology companies in the area.
As of 2010, there were approximately 85 technology startups in the area, including Tinker.it, Trampoline Systems, AMEE, Skimbit, Fotango, Techlightenment, Kizoom, BrightLemon and Redmonk.
Daniel Waterhouse, a partner at venture capital firm Wellington Partners, said that the attention Silicon Roundabout was attracting could make things even harder for startups to find office space.
Referring to the lack of office space, Conversocial Ltd founder Joshua March told Bloomberg: “Most of us still haven’t found proper office space.”
Conversocial is a company which advises businesses on how to use social media. After being expelled from its SoHo office a few months ago, the company is still looking for new office space.
Prime Minister David Cameron has said he wants to turn London into a technology hub akin to Silicon Valley to make the capital less reliant on the financial services industry.
According to commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, the technology sector in London made up 11 per cent of all commercial property leasing over the last five years and currently employs about 400,000 people.
Editor’s notes: In 2022, the technology, media and telecoms (TMT) sector) made up 17 per cent of the office leasing activity in Central London which was down from its 2021 peak of 29 per cent. Total office take-up was 10.1 million square feet, so the TMT sector accounted for 1.72 million square feet.
Total take-up in East London, including districts such as Shoreditch and Hoxton, was 614,000 square feet.
As of Septmber 2026, over 20 flex space providers in the Old Street and Silicon Roundabout district operated flexible office space and workspace solutions that offered agile alternatives to leased office space. See profiles of the flex space providers near Old Street here
AI and technology firms accounted for more than a quarter of total central London office lettings take-up in Q1 2026.
AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI acquired almost 250,000 square feet of office space in the quarter alone.