The UK Doubles EIS Limits: A Major Step Toward Scaling the UK’s High-Growth Companies

When Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered her Budget on Wednesday, one announcement stood out for high-growth businesses: the largest expansion of the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) in more than a decade, significantly increasing the amount of incentivised capital companies can raise to support their growth.

At Your VC, we work exclusively with early-stage, high-growth companies through EIS. From our vantage point, these changes are not mere technical adjustments, they are a strategic signal that the government recognises one of the UK’s long-standing structural weaknesses: we are exceptional at starting businesses, but far less successful at scaling them globally.

The Largest EIS Expansion in Years

The government has doubled several key thresholds:

• Lifetime company limit: £24m (£40m for Knowledge Intensive Companies - KICs)
• Annual company limit: £10m (£20m for KICs)
• Gross asset limit: £30m pre-issue, £35m post-issue

These updated limits respond to longstanding industry research showing that access to growth capital is one of the biggest barriers for ambitious UK companies. Many strong UK companies ran out of domestic, tax-efficient capital at precisely the moment they needed to accelerate. The new thresholds give founders significantly more headroom to scale with UK investors behind them.

“The UK has long been exceptional at entrepreneurial activity. Recognising the capital journey for companies from start-up to scale-up to becoming a truly global company is an important step forward, not just for founders, but for all the various capital providers along a company’s journey,” says Kieron Launder, our chairman.

Companies now have the scope to raise significantly more within the UK system, giving them more runway to scale effectively with domestic capital.

“The priority should be ensuring companies have the access to capital they need to scale effectively, so they can maximise their chances of successful exits and deliver strong returns for investors,” Launder adds.

These reforms sit alongside a wider set of developments across government and the investment ecosystem, which is beginning to look more comprehensive and strategic.

The key pillars:

• The British Business Bank shifting to larger tickets

  The Bank is targeting larger allocations, up to £100m into growth-stage funds, to support scale-ups beyond early-stage investment. The Bank aims to catalyse private capital, take on additional risk in emerging technologies, and target over 60% of venture and venture-growth investment towards scale-ups.
  
  

• Mansion House Accord to encourage pension support for UK private markets

  Seventeen major DC pension funds have voluntarily committed to higher allocations to private equity, infrastructure, and other illiquid assets.
  
  

• The creation of the National Wealth Fund

  Currently focused on infrastructure, but designed with broader ambitions around net zero and long-term economic growth.
  
  

• EIS limits doubled

  Providing companies with far more domestic capital runway before needing scale-up funding.

The expansion of company EIS thresholds is positive. But it is important that this represents additional support, not a reallocation away from the earliest stage of the market.

Altogether, these initiatives suggest an understanding of private company capital challenges and a willingness to tackle the problem structurally. Taken together, they represent a positive step towardslonger-term support of private company growth and wealth creation in the UK.