Lab and mid-tech take-up reached 312,100 sq ft in H1 2026, up 35% year-on-year. Cambridge led the Golden Triangle, with 149,800 sq ft of take-up. Only 17,300 sq ft was for lab space however, and every deal fell below 5,000 sq ft across the Sidney Sussex Building, Bio-Innovation Centre and Moneta Building. Mid-tech space made up 88% of Cambridge take-up, driven by defence occupiers expanding on the back of manufacturing contracts and funding won since the outbreak of the Iran war in February.
London take-up reached 95,800 sq ft in H1, of which 65% of take-up was of mid-tech space at Imperial's Grapht Works. Lab take-up was led by activity at Kadans' MAYDE, Brandon Road, and by Humanoid taking the fitted lab floor at British Land and RLAM's 1 Triton Square. These figures exclude the major 88,500 sq ft and 158,000 sq ft deals to frontier AI companies OpenAI at Jahn Court and Anthropic, at 1 Triton Square. AI companies are taking lab-enabled space for the globally recognised AI location, access to talent, and enhanced power and technical specification of the buildings.
A further 470,300 sq ft was under offer at the close of June across the Golden Triangle. This is more than three times ahead of last year. Despite a relatively subdued half year of take-up for Oxford, 186,700 sq ft was under offer here.
DTRE are tracking 2.2 million sq ft of total named demand across the Golden Triangle by the end of the half year, with active demand of just over 1 million sq ft. This is up 30% year on year, driven by Cambridge where active demand has increased by 85% year on year.
Supply across the Golden Triangle rose to 2.1 million sq ft, with the Q2 completions of Breakthrough Properties' Vitrum and Kadans' Merlin Place in Cambridge, alongside Sciopolis' One Portal Way in London. This is up from 781,000 sq ft at the close of the same period last year, and shows that, while demand and take up are improving, they are not yet offsetting the rapid delivery of space.
The development pipeline remains substantial on paper, with 3.2 million sq ft currently under construction. 500,000 sq ft of that was pre-let by the close of June. Most development is concentrated in London, with Canary Wharf Group and Kadans Science Partners' One North Quay accounting for nearly 1 million sq ft of that. DTRE are tracking a further 13 million sq ft of potential supply in the pipeline to the end of 2028, but with zero new starts in Q2, we anticipate many will not start until further up-and-built supply is absorbed.
£3 billion of venture capital was raised across the Golden Triangle in H1, up 60% on the £1.8 billion raised in the same period last year. Whilst VC into Oxford was subdued at £146 million, VC raised into Cambridge-headquartered companies alone rose 74%, with London's total similarly rising by 73%. These totals are however distorted by two significant raises, with Isomorphic Labs making up 69% of London's total and CellCentric 29% of Cambridge's. Instead, we can look at the median deal size across the Golden Triangle which has climbed from c.£1 million in 2024 to c.£3 million by mid-2026.
The funding environment remains difficult, and raising is still taking longer than anticipated, especially with much of the available capital being absorbed by AI businesses. Despite this, occupiers are beginning to view options while they fundraise, and running the search and the raise in tandem is closing the gap from companies raising, to then leasing space. That lag from raise to lease has shortened in all three markets: Cambridge from c.2.5 quarters in 2023 to 2 in 2025, London halving from 4 quarters to 2, and Oxford from 8.5 quarters to 5. Once the 2026 cohort has progressed, we anticipate this gap to compress further. The data continues to support our thesis from our last report, demonstrating green shoots of recovery across the market. GSK's July commitment to 300,000 sq ft at Prologis' Discovery Drive on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus only supports our view. Set against the 470,300 sq ft under offer at the end of June, the second half of the year should outperform the first. We remain confident that the corner is being turned.
