How the figures work

Where the data comes from

Bradshaw is built from public registers. The main source is what UK companies file at Companies House, above all the return of allotment of shares (form SH01) and the statement of capital that goes with it.

Three more sources fill in the picture. Accounts data from Companies House gives net assets, cash and employees for each balance-sheet period. The register of people with significant control (PSC) shows which companies hold shares in other companies; individuals are left out. Innovate UK awards come from UKRI open data and are matched to companies.

Filings stay at Companies House. Bradshaw reads them, links to the page of the filing behind each figure, and never stores or re-hosts the documents.

What counts as a round

A round is one financing event: one or more share allotments (SH01) grouped by date and price. Only priced equity is counted. Rounds filed in another currency count when they are worth £100,000 or more at the Bank of England rate on the allotment date, and the company has no corporate parent holding 75% or more; we show them in the currency filed and never convert them. Totals, averages, rankings and benchmarks use rounds filed in pounds only. Option exercises and allotments at nominal value are left out.

A set of allotments counts as a round when it passes all three rules:

Benchmarks and signals use a stricter cut of 0.55 and over, and the weekly list uses 0.65 and over. The Confidence section below explains the score.

What an SH01 does not show

A return of allotment (SH01) records new shares that a UK company allots. Some financing does not appear there, so it is not in Bradshaw's rounds:

Price per share and cash raised

Price per share is the amount paid per share including premium, as filed. If a round has lines at different prices, the round takes the highest priced line, and the tranches at other prices stay in the working. Cash raised is the sum of the priced lines in the round, as filed.

Values are stored as filed and are never corrected or rounded in the working. On screen, money is shortened to three significant figures, such as £185m. The working and the CSV give whole pounds and pence.

The filings for this round also hold one line that it leaves out: 100 shares at £1.00, which is at or below nominal value.

Post-money and pre-money

Post-money is the price per share times the shares in issue after the round, taken from the latest statement of capital in the round, less any deferred shares, which carry no economic value. Pre-money is the price per share times the shares in issue before it, which is the shares after less the new priced shares.

Unissued option pools are not counted, so these figures read below the “fully diluted” valuations in press reports. Bradshaw computes them from filed figures, so they carry the Estimate mark.

Every round gets a verdict on its post-money. Bradshaw quotes the figure, quotes it with a Read with care mark when growth or incentive shares are 10% or more of the shares or the priced class is under 10% of them, and shows nothing (Not shown, with the reason) when the filing cannot support a reliable figure.

Step-ups

A step-up is a round’s price per share divided by the previous priced round’s price per share. It is shown from 0.05x to 20x. A company’s first priced round has no step-up and shows n/a.

Rounds that follow a share split are excluded, because a price per share before and after a split cannot be compared.

Confidence

Confidence is a score from 0 to 1 for how sure Bradshaw is that a set of allotments is one priced round. It starts at 0.50 for priced equity and adds points for corroborating filings, such as new articles, a new share class, or a resolution that names a preferred class. Every score is shown with its reasons.

The latest Gordon Lambert UK Ltd round scores 0.85:

How accurate are the rounds?

Measured on 22 October 2026. Each filing in the test was read independently twice by automated readers working from the filing pages, and a third automated review settled every disagreement and rechecked every priced round.

• Of the priced rounds we publish, 98% are priced equity rounds (95% confidence range 94.3% to 99.3%; 150 rounds drawn at random and checked).
• Of all priced equity rounds of £100,000 or more filed at Companies House by the companies we have read, we publish 84% (range 78% to 85%). A further 8% are identified but not yet shown, because a check on the filing could not confirm the figures or because the round was raised in another currency.
• Where we publish a round, the cash raised matches the filing within 5% in 99% of cases, and the price per share matches exactly in 99%.

What is not covered: rounds with no SH01 filed (for example money raised by a US parent company), rounds in companies we have not yet read, scanned filings we cannot yet read, and rounds under £100,000. Every round links to its filing and shows its working, so any figure can be checked.

Status marks

One fixed set. Each mark means one thing on every screen, in the CSV and in the API.

Sectors and regions

Sector is one of 16 Bradshaw sectors (counts and trends use sector only; tags are never summed as if exclusive). Region is one of the 12 UK regions and nations, taken from the postcode of the registered office. Until a company is classified, filters still use the SIC-group bridge so existing views keep working.

Reading the Market page

On Market, Estimate marks a figure Bradshaw computed from filed data, Possible marks a hint that is not a fact, and Being checked marks a view whose accuracy check has not passed yet. Years held come from the date a person with significant control (PSC) was first notified. The PSC register began in 2016 and early filings are catch-up, so a start on or before 30 June 2016 is shown as “2016 or earlier” and its years are a minimum, never an exact count. Region means the registered office, which can differ from where a company trades. A change between two periods is shown only when we have read at least 90% of the SH01 filings in both periods; otherwise it reads n/a.

Sector coverage

4,430 of 5,706,877 companies (0%) have a live Bradshaw sector from the classifier (taxonomy v1.1). Sources are the company’s own website description, Innovate UK grant titles, principal activity from filed accounts, and SIC codes (SIC alone never finishes a classification beyond the SIC-based group).

Live sectors: Enterprise software, Financial services and fintech, Health and life sciences, Climate, energy and environment, Consumer products and retail, Food, drink and agrifood, Media, gaming and creative, Property, construction and proptech, Education and training, Industrial and manufacturing, Business and professional services.

Other sectors are marked Incomplete until they pass the accuracy check. C47 gold-set status: scored, as of 2026-10-29.

Precision per sector

• AI and data infrastructure: 73% (Incomplete)
• Enterprise software: 100%
• Financial services and fintech: 95%
• Health and life sciences: 98%
• Climate, energy and environment: 98%
• Deep tech and hardware: 81% (Incomplete)
• Mobility and transport: 82% (Incomplete)
• Defence, security and cyber: 67% (Incomplete)
• Telecoms and connectivity: 67% (Incomplete)
• Consumer products and retail: 97%
• Food, drink and agrifood: 100%
• Media, gaming and creative: 90%
• Property, construction and proptech: 92%
• Education and training: 100%
• Industrial and manufacturing: 97%
• Business and professional services: 100%

Updates and corrections

Rounds, benchmarks and signals are rebuilt every night. New filings also arrive from the Companies House stream every few minutes, and each data page states the time of the latest event, as in “Data to 3 Nov 2026, 22:30”. A filing that arrived today carries the Live mark until midnight.

Filing lag: time from Companies House publishing a share allotment filing to it appearing in Bradshaw. Over the last 30 days (1,832 filings), the median was 2 minutes and nine in ten arrived within 8 minutes. 100% appeared within 1 hour and 100% within 24 hours.

If a figure looks wrong, open the filing from the link in its working and compare. If it still looks wrong, tell us which round and which figure.