The UK Infratech market is increasingly weighted towards businesses at this point in their journey. Venture and growth-stage companies attracted almost 79% of Infratech equity investment in 2025, according to our latest research, while the share secured by growth-stage businesses alone has risen from 8.96% in 2020 to 30.3% in 2025.
This shift extends beyond fundraising, pointing to a growing cohort of Infratech businesses making the transition from entrepreneurial growth to organisational scale. The next challenge is ensuring the teams, systems and commercial models can support a larger business.
From a successful product to a scalable business
This transition is difficult across the scale-up economy. McKinsey research found that 78% of companies that had successfully built a product and achieved product-market fit did not go on to achieve scale.[1] Its analysis identifies a common inflection point at which the approaches that helped a founder-led business achieve its early success are no longer sufficient for its next phase of growth.
Deloitte’s 2026 survey found that 88% of UK scale-ups prioritised customer and revenue expansion, yet 63% cited market demand and sales execution as their main obstacle to growth. A further 61% identified operational excellence as an area for improvement.[2] The challenge is therefore not simply proving that demand exists, but establishing the commercial processes and operating systems required to capture it repeatedly.
For Infratech businesses, this can mean strengthening governance and leadership, making sales processes more repeatable, recruiting the right talent and building a commercial model capable of serving a larger customer base. As businesses enter this next phase, these capabilities need to mature alongside the technology.
Preparing for a growing infrastructure market
There is good reason for Infratech businesses to be ambitious. The UK’s infrastructure pipeline now includes 734 planned projects representing £718bn of public and private investment over the next decade,[3] creating a substantial opportunity for Infratech businesses that can meet the demands of complex projects at scale. Capturing that opportunity also depends on access to the right external resources. The ScaleUp Institute’s 2025 Annual Review identifies access to markets, talent and finance as the three most persistent barriers facing UK scale-ups.[4] Together, they highlight an important distinction between funding growth and managing growth. Capital can provide the resources to recruit, expand or invest in commercial capability, but businesses also need to make the right decisions about where and how to grow.
For Infratech, the prize is a stronger generation of UK businesses capable of taking a larger role in the infrastructure market as investment increases. The companies best placed to do so will combine technical capability with the commercial and operational foundations needed to sustain their growth.
[1]McKinsey & Company, 2025. “The scale-up conundrum: Evolving startups from founder-led growth to industrialised scalability”. (Accessed: September 2026).
[2]Deloitte, 2026. “Scale-Ups Confidence Survey EMEA 2026”. (Accessed: September 2026).
[3]National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, 2026. “Infrastructure Pipeline update signals future workforce needs”. (Accessed: September 2026).
[4]ScaleUp Institute, 2025. “ScaleUp Annual Review 2025”. (Accessed: September 2026).
Building the company alongside the technology
The support surrounding an investment can be as important as the capital itself. Murphy Capital’s investment focus sits primarily around Series A and B, when businesses have established market validation and are preparing for their next phase of growth, with ticket sizes ranging from £500k to £8m. From the outset, we work with leadership teams to agree strategic priorities and establish governance that supports effective decision-making. That can extend into refining go-to-market strategy and the commercial model, supporting talent acquisition and helping businesses think through expansion into new regions.
Portfolio companies can also draw on the wider Murphy business. This includes infrastructure expertise across energy, transportation, water and civil engineering, alongside opportunities to engage with the projects and operational environments in which new technologies need to perform. Murphy’s £8.2bn order book and international operations provide a substantial industry platform behind that support.
As a business expands, its leadership team needs to understand how its technology fits into increasingly complex projects, what customers require in practice and how the organisation itself needs to evolve. Murphy can bring an infrastructure operator’s perspective to those decisions while supporting the wider commercial development of the business.
The aim is not to impose the structures of a large organisation on an emerging business, but to build the capabilities that allow it to retain its entrepreneurial strengths as it grows. As more UK Infratech companies reach this stage, that ability to combine innovation with disciplined growth will become increasingly important.
Further insight into the investment trends shaping UK Infratech is explored in Murphy Capital’s newly published report UK Infratech: From Innovation to Scale.